Admissions Decision Timing and College Enrollment: Evidence from North Carolina Public Institutions

This paper examines whether the time institutions take to issue admissions decisions is associated with students’ enrollment behavior. Using administrative data on applicants to 13 public universities in North Carolina, linked to National Student Clearinghouse records, we study variation in the number of days between application completion and admission notification. Across a wide range of specifications, admissions decision timing exhibits only meager associations with enrollment at the admitting institution or with where students enroll when they do not attend that institution. Even for a substantial 30-day difference in timing and at the upper bounds of confidence intervals, the estimated changes in enrollment probabilities are not economically or practically meaningful. Among students admitted to multiple UNC institutions, earlier offers are somewhat more likely to be chosen, but institutional selectivity is a much stronger predictor of enrollment. Overall, the results provide little evidence that marginal differences in admissions decision timing are meaningfully associated with campus yield or system-wide enrollment patterns in this setting.