The Role of Application Assistance and Information in College Decisions: Results from the H&R Block FAFSA Experiment*

By E. Bettinger, Bridget Terry Long, Philip Oreopoulos, L. Sanbonmatsu. 2012

1,088 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Accounting, Education, Gender Studies

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6928d57fa9fb1d6ba77622ead3fbb198b1b1ad2b

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Citations in the corpus

Fostering and Measuring Skills: Improving Cognitive and Non-cognitive Skills to Promote Lifetime Success (2014, background): “In collaboration with a tax preparation service, Bettinger et al. (2012) identified a group of low-income families with adolescents or young adults who did not yet have a bachelor’s degree.”
Nudging in education (2018, background): “Low-income individuals who had received assistance completing their tax returns were provided with personal assistance to complete financial aid applications (Bettinger et al., 2012).”
RCTs to Scale: Comprehensive Evidence from Two Nudge Units (2020, methodology): “…all the estimated effects are positive, with some very large point estimates, e.g., an impact of over 20 percentage points for an experiment increasing take-up of federal financial aid (Bettinger et al., 2012), or an experiment testing active choice in 401(k) enrollment (Carroll et al., 2009).”
Does Money Matter in the Long Run? Effects of School Spending on Educational Attainment (2017, background): “Bettinger et al. (2012) randomly offered families at H&R Block assistance filling out the FAFSA, finding a cost per student induced into college of $1,100 (=$88/0.08). Hyman (2013) evaluated the effect of Michigan’s recent requirement that all students take the ACT college entrance exam, a policy th”
Should Governments Invest More in Nudging? (2017, positive): “Thus, it produced 1.53 additional college enrollees per thousand dollars spent (Bettinger et al., 2012).”
Behavioral Economics and Public Policy: A Pragmatic Perspective (2015, positive): “Bettinger et al. (2012) show that offering information and assistance in completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form to low-income families significantly increases the probability that their children attend college.”
Experimental Evidence on the Effect of Childhood Investments on Postsecondary Attainment and Degree Completion. NBER Working Paper No. 17533. (2011, neutral): “Bettinger et al. (2012) randomly assigned families to a low-cost treatment that consisted of helping them to complete the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid), the lengthy and complicated form required to obtain financial aid for college.”
Secrets and Likes: The Drive for Privacy and the Difficulty of Achieving It in the Digital Age (2020, background): “” As a result, minor inconveniences, such as the time and effort of completing a form, can have a huge impact on behavior (Bettinger et al., 2012).”
Behavioral Economics of Education (2015, background): “For example, Bettinger et al. (2012) report the results from a field experiment in hich students from low-income families received a special nudge – namely personal assistance with filling out the very omplicated “Free Application for Federal Student Aid” form.”
Why Do College Going Interventions Work (2017, positive): “They also calculate that the Bettinger et al. 2012 H.R. Block FAFSA intervention costs $1,100 per student induced into college.”
The Analysis of Field Choice in College and Graduate School: Determinants and Wage Effects (2015, positive): “The importance of knowledge about potential financial aid and how to receive it is also evidenced in Bettinger et al. (2012), who show that students who received help filling out their FAFSA forms were significantly more likely to enroll in college. Given the results in Hoxby & Avery (2013), Hoxby &”