College Admissions under Early Decision

Mumcu, Ayse and Saglam, Ismail (2007): College Admissions under Early Decision. Unpublished.

Abstract

In this paper, we model college admissions under early decision in a many-to-one matching framework with two periods. We show that there exists no stable matching system, involving an early decision matching rule and a regular decision matching rule, which is nonmanipulable via early decision quotas by colleges or via early decision preferences by colleges or students. We then analyze the Nash equilibria of the game, in which the preferences of colleges and students in each period are common knowledge and every college determines a quota for the early decision period given its total capacity for the two periods. Under college-optimal and student-optimal matching systems, we show that a pure strategy equilibrium may not exist. However, when colleges or students have common preferences over the other set of agents, 'terminating early decision program' becomes a weakly dominant strategy for each college if every student, choosing to act early, always applies early to his or her top choice college.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Institution: Bogazici University
• Language: English
• Keywords: Many-to-one matching; college admissions; early decision
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C7 - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory > C71 - Cooperative Games; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C7 - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory > C78 - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory

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