Wastefulness in sequential school choice with public and private schools

Using data from the Swedish municipality of Botkyrka, this paper quantifies the trade-off between non-wastefulness and truthfulness in sequential admission systems for public and private schools. The results show that minimizing seat waste while preserving truthfulness is possible by restricting first-round applications to either private or public schools, depending on which type of school that is expected to have fewer applicants. These findings offer practical insights for improving the efficiency of real-world sequential school admission systems. • We empirically analyze sequential school choice. • We quantify the trade-off between non-wastefulness and truthfulness. • We suggest restricting first-round applications to the least popular “school type”.