Information and Self-selection in School Choice: an Experiment

We study how different framings of otherwise equivalent information affect school choice under uncertainty. In an online experiment, subjects repeatedly submitted rank-ordered lists of schools knowing only a probability distribution over their own score. Admission depended solely on whether the score exceeded exogenous school cutoffs. Across rounds, subjects varied in “type” (advantaged/disadvantaged score distributions) and faced one of four information treatments: a control (score distribution only), ex-ante admission probabilities, simulated ex-post composition statistics, and composition statistics based on actual choices of prior participants. We find that information framing has large and heterogeneous effects. Advantaged students react strongly to both ex-ante and ex-post information, becoming more cautious under probability information and more ambitious under composition information; disadvantaged students respond more weakly and only under specific cutoff environments. Ex-ante information significantly reduces segregation between advantaged and disadvantaged types. Our results highlight that the impact of information depends critically on student type and market competitiveness, implying that effective information policies must be carefully tailored to their intended beneficiaries.