京都大学 大学院経済学研究科・経済学部

タイトル: “Feel” as a Determinant of College Choice: Evidence From Campus Tour Weather
 

Abstract: The feeling or impression that students get about enrolling in a
particular college may be an important determinant of their college
application decision. Combining institutional records on college
campus tour participants over the last decade with hourly weather
information, we leverage tour weather as a plausibly exogenous shock
to students’ “feel” for attending the toured college. We find that
poor tour weather reduces participants’ likelihood of applying. Tour
participants, for example, are 10 percent less likely to apply when
their tour is hot and 8 percent less likely when precipitation occurs
during their tour. Using administrative data documenting where all
tour participants enroll in college, we find that tour weather has
little to no impact on the quality or type of college that
participants ultimately attend. Nevertheless, our results suggest that
students’ “feel” for attending a college can play an important role in
the college application decision.