The Impact of the Texas Top 10 Percent Law on College Enrollment: A Regression Discontinuity Approach

Abstract

We use regression discontinuity methods on a representative survey of Texas high school seniors to discern the impact on flagship-enrollment behavior of the Texas top 10 percent law, which guarantees admission to any Texas public university to students who graduate in the top decile of their class. By comparing students at and immediately below the cut-point for automatic admission, we find that the top 10 percent law affects flagship enrollment of Hispanic students eligible for the admission guarantee, as well as rank-eligible graduates from high schools where minority students predominate and from high schools with the state average share of economically disadvantaged students. Our findings are robust to various model specifications and different bandwidth choices using local linear estimation.