CEF.UP – WiP Seminar/Webinar

Friday – October 22^nd, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305 | Online

“Specialists or All-Rounders: How best to select university students?”.

Pedro Luís Silva – CIPES and FEP

Abstract:

This paper studies whether universities should select their students only using specialised subject-specific tests or based on a broader set of skills and knowledge. I show that even if broader skills are not improving graduates’ outcomes in the labour market, the university chooses to use them as a criterion for selection alongside the mastery of more subject-specific tools. Empirically, I exploit the variation between subject-specific and non-specific entrance exam sets on Portuguese students’ large administrative dataset. My central finding is that, on average, universities with less specialised admission policies admit a pool of students who obtain a higher final GPA.