Historical Data on Centralized College Assigment (1967-2017)

Mechanism Design in Practice in Chile

Historical College Admissions Data

This project is a massive undertaking whose objective is to recover, digitalize and systematize college historical data on centralized college admissions in Chile. Chile was one of the first countries in the world to implement a centralized college admissions process, starting in year 1967. This process' backbone is a standardized entry exam -formerly PAA; PSU after year 2003- which has historically been comprised of specific subject tests on mathematics, language, science and history. All students who apply to higher education must sit through these tests, and standardized score results were published at the individual level.

In addition to test scores, during each year a local newspaper published University and major information, including vacancies, costs of application and major-specific weights for all PSU/PAA subject tests. Students ranked their prefered college-major combinations, and results of these applications were also published in the same fashion, including the full application list and the condition of the application (ie. admitted, waitlisted, rejected).

By linking this data with tax records of more than 40 cohorts of students in the whole country, we are able to estimate RDs across more than a thousand of margins, estimating the effect of college and major on life-cycle income. Several practical limitations arise when using this data, and this project is an ongoing effort to improve and polish these datasets.