Timing of preference submissions under the Boston mechanism

Abstract

This paper considers a model of centralized college admission under the Boston mechanism where students may have uncertainty about their priorities. Students have homogeneous ordinal preferences over colleges, but their preference intensities vary, and the exam scores determine their priorities. In equilibrium, student application strategies take a cutoff form. The strategies depend on their exam scores under post‐score submissions, on preference intensities under pre‐exam submissions, and on both preference intensities and signals about their exam scores under pre‐score submissions. Given these equilibrium strategies, students are better off under pre‐exam and pre‐score submissions than post‐score submissions. When students with the same preference intensities and exam scores receive signals of different qualities, those with bad signals could be hurt by those with good signals.