forthcoming in the American Economic Review

We examine differences in minority science graduation rates among University of Cali-fornia campuses when racial preferences were in place. Less-prepared minorities at higher-ranked campuses had lower persistence rates in science and took longer to graduate. We estimate a model of students ’ college major choice where net returns of a science major differ across campuses and student preparation. We find less-prepared minority students at top-ranked campuses would have higher science graduation rates had they attended lower-ranked campuses. Better matching of science students to universities by preparation and providing information about students ’ prospects in different major-university combi-nations could increase minority science graduation