Caroline Hoxby
February 2006: “Cost Should Be No Barrier: An Evaluation of the First Year of Harvard’s Financial Aid Initiative,” by Christopher Avery, Caroline M. Hoxby, and others, is issued as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper. The researchers found that Harvard University’s new effort drew a group of applicants that was larger and somewhat poorer than before.
Melissa Roderick
March 2008: The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research releases a research report, “From High School to the Future: Potholes on the Road to College,” that sheds light on the issue of college match among students in Chicago Public Schools.
September 2009: Crossing the Finish Line, by William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos, and Michael S. McPherson, is published. The book, believed to contain the first use of the term “undermatching,” presents evidence that students have a better shot at graduation if they go to a more selective college.
Christopher Avery
December 2012: “The Missing ‘One-Offs’: The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low-Income Students,” by Ms. Hoxby and Mr. Avery, is released as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research. It estimates the population of high-achieving, low-income students and explains that many of them are not located in the places where college recruiters are likely to be looking.
Sarah Turner
March 2013: “Expanding College Opportunities for High-Achieving, Low Income Students,” by Ms. Hoxby and Sarah E. Turner, is released as a discussion paper by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. It shares the results of an experiment in which the authors mailed information on colleges and application fee waivers to such students.
March 2013: Ms. Hoxby and Ms. Turner announce that the College Board will be expanding their experiment.
June 2013: The Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project releases a proposal from Ms. Hoxby and Ms. Turner saying they plan to work with the College Board and ACT to adapt their experiment and asking for federal data that would help them further customize their outreach efforts.
September 2013: The State of Delaware announces its effort to combat undermatching.
December 2013: Ms. Hoxby and Ms. Turner are included in The Chronicle’s 2013 Influence List.
January 2014: Undermatching is discussed at the White House college opportunity summit.
Michael Bastedo
February 2014: Educational Researcher releases “Conceptual and Methodological Problems in Research on College Undermatch,” by Michael Bastedo and Allyson Flaster, which describes assumptions made in undermatching work and argues that they may not hold.
