How information frictions differentially affect major choices of students across socioeconomic backgrounds has not yet been fully characterized, despite its important labor market consequences and implications for intergenerational income mobility. Using administrative data from the centralized Chinese college application and admission system, I document that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to choose majors that are directly related to high school curricula than their high-SES peers. Experimental and observational evidence suggests that the documented major-choice disparity is primarily driven by information inequality across SES. Low-SES students have less information and thus rely more heavily on their high school experience. To analyze the welfare consequences of the information inequality, I build a discrete major choice model and conduct counterfactual analysis under affirmative action policies.
