This article, write by Mélusine Boon-Falleur, Elise Huillery (University Paris Dauphine) and Coralie Chevallier (INSERM, ENS, Institut Jean Nicod), published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), studies how waiting for opportunities, such as university admissions, can unintentionally reinforce social inequalities in higher education in France. 

Using a large French national dataset of +270000 high school students over three years, the authors show that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to wait for better admission offers, even when waiting would objectively increase their chances of entering more prestigious or better‑suited programs. 

As a result, these students more often end up in less prestigious and less preferred programs, even when waiting does not entail any additional cost or risk for them, whereas students from more more advantaged backgrounds benefit more from systems that reward patience. 

The article concludes that admission procedures that create uncertainty and require waiting, although seemingly neutral and efficient, can deepen educational inequalities and should be redesigned to reduce waiting times and provide better support, including confidence-boosting messages, to help all students decide whether to wait.

Link to the paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2426604122 
Preprint (open access):  https://osf.io/preprints/osf/f7w3v_v1