Distributional Effects of Race-Blind Affirmative Action

This paper compares the impacts of providing information about college admissions and financial aid at scale to those of large-scale policies which directly impact admissions and financial aid offers. It uses variation induced by the "Top Ten Percent" policy in Texas, which guaranteed admissions to each in-state public university to all students ranking in the top decile of their high school class, to estimate a model of college applications, admissions, and achievement. Texas Top Ten caused more students from high-poverty schools to enroll at the flagship universities. Moreover, students who enrolled under it achieved higher GPAs than those who would have enrolled at flagships in its absence, primarily because the admissions guarantee induced strong students to submit applications. Texas Top Ten had small effects on minority enrollment. An expansion of a targeted scholarship program would enroll more students from high-poverty schools than would purely-informative interventions.