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College Application Mistakes — Chile
A multi-year collaboration with Chile's higher-education admissions system to stop students from losing places they had earned. Nationwide surveys found that 40% of students were not applying to the program they most wanted, and that one in ten of those students would have been better off had they applied. Working with the Ministry of Education, ConsiliumBots delivered personalized information during the application window — what each program involves, a student's real chances of admission, and alternative majors worth considering — first as a large-scale field experiment and then as national policy.
Target population
Chilean students applying to university through the centralized admissions process
Key outcomes
- 40% of students were not applying to their preferred program; 10% of them would have benefited from doing so
- Field experiment raised the probability of assignment for unmatched students by 20%, and of a better assignment for undermatched students by 38%
- After scaling nationally, roughly doubled the matching probability for unmatched and undermatched students
- Tripled the likelihood of enrollment for students who would otherwise have gone unmatched
Team
- Christopher Neilson — Principal Investigator
