Limiting Applications in College Admissions and Evidence from Conflicting Exam Dates

We present a college admissions problem in which colleges may benefit from limiting the number of applications; specifically, a strategy of administering their entrance exams on the same date. Our model shows that a lower-ranked but still-selective college can attract preferred students through this strategy. We test the model by using the entrance exams of graduate schools in Taiwan and find that student quality could be improved when colleges allow their departments to determine whether to use the strategy. Moreover, a department that has a small difference in prestige between it and the most prestigious department will tend to use the strategy to limit the number of applications.