College Admissions: A Modest Proposal

Photo by Richard Tom on Unsplash

Elite schools – Harvard, Georgetown, others – are acknowledging their early ties with slavery. That’s a good thing; honesty is like sunlight, illuminating and cleansing at the same time. I suggest colleges go public with another hidden fact: That admission decisions become, at some point, essentially random.  A lottery, publicly announced, would be more honest.

Many colleges receive far more applications than they can accept. Admissions committees use various criteria:  grades, SAT scores, extra-curricular activities, the rigor of the courses taken, letters of recommendation, the students’ personal essays, even interviews by alumni.  Some groups are given an advantage: veterans, children of alumni and donors, underrepresented minorities, the geographically unusual (Nepalese, North Dakotans . . . ), athletes.

Why all this sorting? What’s the goal?

Goals, actually, many of them. Not all fit together comfortably; not all are admirable. But essentially the sorting is meant to help the institution fulfill its purposes. At the individual level, higher education is meant to help students live more fully through the powers of the mind, and minds sharpen best in the company of their peers. But wisdom is more than knowledge, and so students also need classmates whose lives have been unlike their own. Much of what happens in life is shaped by class, race, and geography. Reading about different lives is useful; better still is rubbing elbows with those who live them.

Community goals are similar. Higher education should contribute to an informed citizenry, and provide a pool of thoughtful, informed leaders.  A diverse student body helps provide a slate of leaders who understand the country’s history, ideals, and realities.

Sorting and sifting are also done in pursuit of fairness. Higher education provides intellectual tools, but also personal connections and status. Racism has left its mark, made it more difficult for students of color to meet traditional admissions standards. They deserve a leg up.

There are less admirable, institutional, goals. When children of donors and alums are favored, it’s purely for the good of the university. In addition, elite universities need to maintain their brand. Accepting only the top 3%, however that’s defined, means graduating the top 3%.

So, lots of goals. How well do the criteria now used serve those goals? Varyingly. Some help, some hurt. Some reinscribe privilege. Others counter it, but at a cost. Preferential treatment for some groups (veterans, athletes, Nepalese) goes unnoticed. But preference for minorities is noted and begrudged. The assumption that they were admitted under lower standards will undercut their achievements, even in their own eyes; too often it also creates resentment.

There are other problems.  For one, those who are rejected inevitably feel they have failed. (“Was it my essay?”)  The injuries to those accepted is subtler: it can give them an exaggerated sense of worth, or, conversely, reinforce an imposter syndrome.

Hence my proposal: That at some point colleges acknowledge that everyone still in the applicant pool is an excellent candidate.  At the point, for instance, when the committee decides whether a 4.0 GPA from School X means more than a 3.9 from School Y;  whether a Kazakh or a Kenyan adds more diversity; whether a trophy in track outweighs captaining the tennis team. At that point decisions are essentially arbitrary. What is a matter of chance should be presented as such: as a lottery.

Lotteries can be weighted. Certain groups of applicants can be given better odds – in essence, giving them two tickets rather than one. The Dutch, in their lottery for medical school admissions, give better odds to applicants with the highest test scores.  American colleges could choose to give better odds to any of the groups who now receive preference.  I would hope they’d drop preference for families of alums; and an argument can be made for privileging first generation college students rather than ethnic minorities as such.  But those are issues for another day.

A lottery acknowledges the role of chance in college admissions. Today’s system hides it, to everyone’s detriment -- except the colleges, who need the illusion that successful applicants are superior to everyone else. Colleges have a stake in maintaining that illusion. But for everyone else a lottery would lighten the stakes and clear the air. Here’s to the day when high school students cry out “I won (or lost) the lottery!”