College Admissions and the Labor Market Beauty Premium

Beautiful people earn more. Surprisingly, this premium is often larger for men than for women, and is independent of customer contact, e.g., even in software engineering. Overlooked is the possibility that beauty can influence college admissions. We investigate this academic contributor to the labor market beauty premium by sampling 1,800 social media profiles of students from universities ranked from 1 to 200 in China and the US. Chinese university admissions are based on standardized test scores. In contrast, US universities use also extracurricular activities and grades, which are not necessarily beauty-blind. Consistent with beauty-blind admissions, we find that the beauty of students and the rank of their school are uncorrelated in China. This suggests that neither beauty nor its correlates (e.g., family income, intelligence, genetic quality...etc) are necessarily related to academic ability, as measured by standardized tests. However, we find that only better-looking White men get into much higher ranked schools in the US. Indeed, a one percentage point increase in beauty rank corresponds to a sizable 20 school increase in school rank for White men. Thus, better-looking White men in particular seem to be advantaged in the US college admissions system. Such an advantage corresponds to roughly a 7 percent increase in salary 10 years after graduation. Our findings suggest that the surprisingly high and field independent labor market beauty premium found for men (who are mostly White) in the US can be an unintended side effect of using non-academic/high school extracurricular activities in elite college admissions decisions.