Impacts of Letters of Recommendation on College Admissions

 In a pilot program during the 2016-17 admissions cycle, the University of California, Berkeley invited many applicants for freshman admission to submit letters of recommendation. This proved controversial within the university, with concerns that this change would further disadvantage applicants from disadvantaged groups. To inform this debate, this study uses this pilot as the basis for an observational study of the impact of submitting letters of recommendation on subsequent admission, with the goal of estimating how impacts vary across pre-defined subgroups. 

Thw authors find that the impact of letters of recommendation increases with applicant strength. However, they find little average difference for applicants from disadvantaged groups, although this result is more mixed. In the end, they conclude that soliciting letters of recommendation from a broader pool of applicants would not meaningfully change the composition of admitted undergraduates.