College Admissions Game: Early Action or Early Decision?

Mumcu, Ayse and Saglam, Ismail (2007): College Admissions Game: Early Action or Early Decision? Unpublished.

Abstract

In this paper, we study the long-played, yet until now unmodeled, college admissions game over early admissions plans using a many-to-one matching framework. We characterize the equilibrium strategies of each college involving its early quota out of its total capacity, and the set of admissible and deferred students within its applicant pool independently from the early admissions plans of the colleges in the market. Given these strategies, we show that for each college early action is a weakly dominant choice between early admissions plans.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Institution: Bogazici University
• Language: English
• Keywords: Many-to-one matching; early action; early decision; college admissions
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C7 - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory > C71 - Cooperative Games; D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D71 - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C7 - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory > C78 - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory

References

Avery, C., Fairbanks, A. and Zeckhauser, R. The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Gale, D. and Shapley, L.S. "College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage," American Mathematical Monthly, 1962, 69(1), 9-15.

Konishi, H. and Unver, M.U. "Games of Capacity Manipulation in Hospital-Intern Markets," Social Choice and Welfare, 2006, 27(1), 3-24.

Mumcu, A. and Saglam, I. "College Admissions under Early Decision," MPRA Paper 1906, 2007, University Library of Munich, Germany.

Roth, A.E. "The College Admissions Problem is not Equivalent to the Marriage Problem," Journal of Economic Theory, 1985, 36(2), 277-288.

Roth, A.E. and Sotomayor, M. Two-Sided Matching: A Study in Game Theoretic Modeling and Analysis. London/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.