Mechanism performance under strategy advice and sub-optimal play: A school choice experiment

•School choice experiment tests the effects of strategy advice in two popular mechanisms.•In strategy-proof DA, strategy advice to tell the truth increases truth-telling rates.•In manipulable IA, strategy advice to play one of two heuristic strategies increases proportion who play them.•New partially-ordered typology of DA strategies reveals sub-optimal strategies exhibit district school bias.•DA outperforms IA, increasingly so under strategy advice.