this paper we estimate the marriage market returns of attending a better university/degree
program by exploiting unique features of the Chilean university admission system. Since this system is based on a centrally administered entry test, it not only constitutes an ideal context for using a regression discontinuity approach to identify causal e ects, but it also provides us with a quality measure for all applying students and their partners. We find that being able to attend a better university/degree program has substantial returns in terms of partner quality. While our estimates show that there are marriage market returns for both sexes, they also indicate that they are more pronounced in the case of female students. We also analyze how the returns vary with the students’ background and how they di er for di erent types of universities-degree programs, such as – for example – the top programs, the large programs and so forth. We find that returns are highest for students in top degree programs, for men in programs with many women, and for students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds as measured by parental education and occupation.