Shifting College Majors in Response to Advanced Placement Exam Scores - NBER Working Paper No. 22841

Sep 20, 2026

Mapping continuous raw scores from millions of Advanced Placement examinations onto the 1 to 5 integer scoring scale, we apply a regression discontinuity design to understand how students’ choice of college major is impacted by receiving a higher integer score despite similar exam performance. Attaining higher scores increases the probability of majoring in that exam subject by about 5 percent (0.64 percentage points), and some exams show increases up to 30 percent. Direct impacts explain roughly 11 percent of the gap, with behavioral responses to the higher score signal playing an important role.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages57

Reading Time2 h 24 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

College major choice and labor market implications

Role of preferences and prior plans

Evidence on policy-shaped influences

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES SHIFTING COLLEGE MAJORS IN RESPONSE TO ADVANCED PLACEMENT EXAM SCORES Christopher Avery Oded Gurantz Michael Hurwitz Jonathan Smith Working Paper 22841 [http://www.nber.org/papers/w22841](http://www.nber.org/papers/w22841) NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 November 2016 Christopher Avery receives funding from The College Board to support his work as Co-Principal Investigator of a research collaboration between the College Board and the Center for Education Policy Research at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The contents of this paper represent the views of the authors and not of their corresponding institutions, nor of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2016 by Christopher Avery, Oded Gurantz, Michael Hurwitz, and Jonathan Smith. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. Shifting College Majors in Response to Advanced Placement Exam Scores Christopher Avery, Oded Gurantz, Michael Hurwitz, and Jonathan Smith NBER Working Paper No. 22841 November 2016 JEL No. I2,I23,J24 ABSTRACT Mapping continuous raw scores from millions of Advanced Placement examinations onto the 1 to 5 integer scoring scale, we apply a regression discontinuity design to understand how students’choice of college major is impacted by receiving a higher integer score despite similar exam performance to students who earned a lower integer score. Attaining higher scores increases the probability that a student will major in that exam subject by approximately 5 percent (0.64 percentage points), with some individual exams demonstrating increases in major choice by as much as 30 percent. These direct impacts of a higher score explain approximately 11 percent of the unconditional 64 percent (5.7 percentage points) gap in the probability of majoring in the same subject as the AP exam when attaining a 5 versus a 4. We estimate that a substantial portion of the overall effect is driven by behavioral responses to the positive signal of receiving a higher score. Christopher Avery Harvard Kennedy School of Government 79 JFK Street Cambridge, MA 02138 and NBER [christopher_avery@hks.harvard.edu](christopher_avery@hks.harvard.edu) Oded Gurantz Stanford University [ogurantz@stanford.edu](ogurantz@stanford.edu) Michael Hurwitz College Board 1919 M Street NW Suite 300 Washington, DC 20036 [mhurwitz@collegeboard.org](mhurwitz@collegeboard.org) Jonathan Smith College Board 1919 M Street NW Suite 300 Washington, DC 20036 [jsmith@collegeboard.org](jsmith@collegeboard.org) 1. Introduction A student’s choice of college major may have long-lasting implications, including on future earnings. The average difference in lifetime earnings between the top-paying and lowestpaying majors is estimated to be several million dollars (Carnevale, Cheah, and Hanson, 2015), and there is growing evidence that at least some portion of the connection between college major and wages is causal (Hastings, Neilson, and Zimmerman, 2013; Kirkebøen, Leuven, and Mogstad, forthcoming) . Despite these seemingly strong labor market incentives, there remains amismatch between demand and supply of workers in some relatively lucrative fields. For example, a 2012 Federal Government report estimates a ten-year shortfall of 1 million college graduates with STEM (“Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics”) majors.1 As these findings suggest, some students may not be choosing their college majors optimally, either because they lack adequate information on the relative benefits and challenges of majors in specific f

FAQs

What identification strategy does the paper use to study major choice?

It maps raw AP scores to the 1 to 5 integer scale and applies a regression discontinuity design.

How does receiving a higher AP integer score affect students’ declared majors?

A higher integer score increases the probability of majoring in the corresponding exam subject by about 5 percent (0.64 percentage points), with some individual exams showing larger effects.

What portion of the major-choice gap is explained by direct score impacts?

The direct impacts of receiving the higher integer score explain about 11 percent of the unconditional 64 percent (5.7 percentage points) gap.

Sep 20, 2026

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