Graduate admission with financial support

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmateco.2020.01.006

We formulate a graduate admission problem, which features different financial support options, in a matching with contracts setting. We introduce an algorithm, called "Minimum-Need Adjusted Cumulative Offer Process" (MCOP). Under certain mild assumptions on students' preferences, MCOP is stable, fair, strategy-proof, and respects improvements. Moreover, it limitedly respects departments' minimum number of teaching and research assistant (TA/RA) needs in the sense that no other stable mechanism honors those needs more than MCOP. It is also efficient within the class of stable mechanisms that limitedly respect the TA/RA needs. Lastly, we offer an axiomatic characterization: A mechanism is stable and strategy-proof, and limitedly respects the TA/RA needs if and only if it is MCOP.