It’s time to fix college admissions

Every fall, the US News releases its highly anticipated college rankings. Once they are released, a throng of curious school administrators, college counselors, alumni, freshmen prospects and their parents peruse the rankings to see where their schools stand relative to others. Did the school break into the vaunted top thirty, twenty, ten of the elites?

But what is an “elite school” anyways? For optimists, it is a place for top-notch education, opportunities, and connections. For cynics, it is a cradle of elitism, conformity, and future white collar criminals.

Despite the plethora of evidence that one’s college alma mater is not a predictor of long-term success, the mental virus of the perceived benefits of the “good school” education has penetrated all rungs of society and all age cohorts. “Elite” college has become a Veblen good (and a discriminating one at that), thanks in large part to the all-too-successful marketing efforts by the US News and snobbish employer hiring practices (Ask Vanderbilt about their latest US News ranking or invite Goldman Sachs, BCG, or Blackstone to recruit at Syracuse).

After the recent Supreme Court decision on fair admissions at Harvard and UNC, the defenders and the opponents of the ruling unleashed a torrent of dueling op-eds. While both sides raised valid arguments, their pen duel omitted the effects of the current system (before and after the ruling) on a much larger constituency, the cohort of students from nth generation Americans to recent immigrants, whose parental income covers the full spectrum of the middle class. These students are just as diverse but not in the categories sought after by today’s admission committees, and their parents are often college educated but not at the legacy-worthy institutions. Under the existing system, these students see their chances of admission to an elite college diminish with every passing year.

Because the spots at the top schools are limited and demand is high, the incentives are also high to crack the admissions code for one of the few “golden tickets” by any means, ethical or not, legal or otherwise. Plenty of high priced consultants, some of dubious qualifications and abhorrent morals, peddle their services to parents, preying on their anxieties. In the end, despite the stress, the academic and extracurricular overload, the application essay polish, and the money spent, the brutal statistics work against most applicants. Each spring, the crestfallen high school seniors and their parents, inundated by rejections and waitlists, are left wondering whether the effort and the money was worth the outcome when the vaunted holistic admissions decisions seem absolutely random.

Since the black box of admissions already seems to many like a lottery, let’s call a spade a spade and make the selection truly random, albeit with full transparency. Here is how such a system might work. For any prospective school, the applicants must first clear the minimum academic requirements as set by the school. Then for each school where the number of qualified applicants is larger than the number of spots, a uniform (i.e. equal chance) random distribution function will pick the lucky winners. The unlucky ones will try again until all students get a spot somewhere. No essays, no recommendation letters, no extracurriculars, and no sports participation are necessary. Simply a minimum weighted GPA, a minimum test score (SAT or ACT), and a minimum number of required and elective AP classes (with a minimum AP test score).

Prerequisites

A single portal for all students and colleges

This requirement is preferred in order to have all of the information for students and colleges in one place, similar to the Common Application for private universities today.[1]

FAFSA must render aid decisions before applications begin

Today, the students apply to schools not knowing exactly how much it will cost them to enroll because the financial aid and scholarships are revealed only after the admission decisions are announced. Only then can the families decide whether they can afford to commit.

Instead, FAFSA should render a binding maximum aid decision before applications begin, strictly on family’s financials, irrespective of any given school's cost of attendance.[2]

After the whole freshmen class is formed, the school’s financial aid office, relying on the submitted CSS profile application, may choose to offer to eligible students scholarships from their own endowment funds.[3]

Return of standardized tests

The insistence on standardized tests such as SAT or ACT and AP exams is to defend against valid criticisms that GPA varies from class to class, teacher to teacher, and school to school. A standardized test helps mitigate such concerns and helps schools such as MIT better assess student preparedness.[4]

Reinstating mandatory standardized tests also rolls back the test optional policies which invite gaming of admissions and resentment on the part of test-taking students.[5]

Random Selection Process

The random selection should proceed in weekly rounds. Prior to the round commencement, each applicant will see an individualized list of schools for which they meet the minimum academic requirements. The list will exclude those schools that already filled their seats in previous rounds. Each remaining school on the list will also display the number of remaining seats to be filled and the number of pending applications, allowing prospects to weigh their odds of success in the next round.[6]

From the list, the applicant may choose up to three schools per round, pay the application fees (with waivers for eligible students), and then the uniform random function automatically picks the winners for each school. The students who win a spot must commit. Those who win spots at multiple schools (up to three) could receive competing scholarship offers from the schools as a commitment inducement.?

The students who did not earn a spot will try again at the next weekly round, including retrying at the same school if there are still spots available. Since there are enough spots each year for every college-bound graduating high school senior, eventually there will be a round where all students gain admission somewhere.

Benefits

Meritocratic, equitable and transparent

The process ensures meritocracy by focusing only on academic requirements (schools can decide what is the bare minimum for their institution). However, there is no need to strive for a maximum GPA or a perfect SAT score since once the minimum bar is cleared, the uniform random selection function ensures that every qualified applicant has an equal chance in the lottery for a given school.[7]

Also, because the academic requirement is quantitative and public for each school, the process is very transparent. No special privileges, no side doors.

Efficient and cost effective

The process of making selection is simple, repeatable, and automatic. Decisions are rendered instantly and all admitted students must commit within a week. The colleges also save money on admission staff and pricey consultants with their pseudo-science yield-optimization algorithms. The savings can be channeled into scholarships, student recruitment outreach and tutoring for underrepresented and marginalized students.[8]

The process is also cost effective for families because rather than paying for dozens of “spray and pray” applications, most students will gain admittance within a few rounds.?

No incentives to exaggerate, embellish or cheat

Because there is no extra admission boost from exceeding minimum academic requirements, there should be less tendencies to cheat, inflate grades, or take difficult classes for GPA boost rather than for genuine interest.?

Similarly, since there is no admission credit for extracurricular pursuits, the competition for spots in admission-preferred activities (ex: robotics, debate, Science Olympiad) should diminish. As should the volume of short-lived non-profits, scientific journal publications, internships at parents’ companies, organized conferences, and patent applications. The genuine extracurriculars are what Bill Gates describes as "the thing you do obsessively between age 13 and 18, that's the thing you have the most chance of being world-class at." Very few students exhibit such an obsession in their teens. And some late bloomers may not discover their “passion” until after they arrive on campus. The elimination of “good college” incentive for partaking in extracurricular activities may prompt some parents to seek other inducements to keep their teens away from “unproductive” pursuits. Others, devoid of pressure to keep up, may breathe a sigh of relief and “let the kids be kids.”

Also out are personal essays (often edited, if not written by highly paid college counselors) which remove the incentive to inflate trauma, invent drama, or falsely claim lineage from an admission-preferred racial or ethnic heritage group a la Elizabeth Warren to Native Americans or AOC to the Jews from Puerto Rico.

Finally, there will be no need for the recommendation letters that often overwhelm teachers and school counselors and are either boring and formulaic or worse, pre-written by hired help.

No pressure to pick a major, no major shopping

With personal essays and extracurriculars out of admission consideration, the toxic pressure to specialize while still in high school and to declare a major when applying should subside.[9]

With less pressure to declare a major on the application, the incentives to do “major shopping” by applying for the least competitive majors (Slavic Studies, anyone?) and then switch once admitted should also disappear.[10]

No boost for sports of any kind

“My kids who play for me, they didn’t choose a university…They chose me.”? – Deon Sanders, football coach, University of Colorado at Boulder

This might be the most controversial but there should be no admission boost for athletes of either money-making or money-losing (niche) sports. Niche sport athletes are welcome to try out after being admitted, while moneymaker sport athletes should forgo college altogether until their playing careers conclude. Such athletes should be hired to play for a college affiliated team that pays them salaries from revenues secured by the TV contracts. In addition to salaries, for some athletes there may be a quite substantial supplemental income from selling their image rights, an option that recently became available thanks to the SCOTUS ruling against the N.C.A.A. In a way, an athlete’s path to college should mirror the one of a student who completes their military service prior to applying.

No legacy admissions

The uniform random selection also ensures that there is no benefit from being a legacy or a relative of a large donor. The ovarian lottery is not a merit of the applicant and thus should not be perpetuated.[11]

Diversity and class shaping

The random selection may actually do a better job of creating a diverse class than the current class shaping policies. It is delusional to think that a small team of overworked admission officers who spend less than seven minutes per application can reliably pick deserving, driven, reputation and quality enhancing students. If hiring is a crapshoot for employers who conduct multiple rounds of in-person interviews, why would admission officers think they can do better? They must accept that their success rate will be just as good as random.?

Rather than facing the scrutiny and lawsuits for their class shaping policies at selection time, the admissions offices should instead focus their resources and efforts on recruiting a diverse pool of eligible applicants at the top of the funnel. To achieve a representative funnel, endowment funds and savings from eliminating admission staff should be used to help students from underrepresented groups achieve the minimum academic eligibility requirements. If the admission funnel is population representative, then the uniform random selection will result in a representative freshman class.[12]

Conclusion

While the uniform random lottery system isn’t perfect, it is arguably better than what we have today. The lottery treats every student equally, eliminates legacy preference, and offers alternatives for achieving diversity. Just as importantly, it reinstates the odds of admissions to competitive colleges for students of middle class parents.

However, changing the current system is a difficult task judging by the vociferous defense of the existing admission policies from the school administrators in reaction to the recent Supreme Court ruling. The schools have no incentive to reform unless there are further successful legal challenges and statutory changes. Until then, they will continue quietly admitting legacies and athletes for maximum financial impact while loudly touting their “holistic” admission policy, even if such a policy is a euphemism for a conveyer-like scoring of essays, transcripts, and tests fed into a computer selection algorithm.

Since an algorithm is what in actuality shapes the admitted class, why not simplify the rules and reduce anxiety for millions of kids applying to college every year.

[1] On the portal, the students will enter their personal information, high schools submit transcripts, College Board uploads test scores, universities broadcast their minimum academic requirements, FAFSA renders financial aid decisions, and portal administrators run a uniform random selection function.

[2] Knowing the amount of the government aid (federal and state) and their own affordability ceiling, the students and their parents will limit their application choices to affordable colleges, forcing high sticker price schools to lower their tuition and offer more spots in order to increase the diversity of the application funnel and keep their revenues stable. (Note that any college opting to keep their prices high will fare no differently than today when they fill most of their class during the early decision rounds.)

[3] The aid from the school will offset the expected family contributions and borrowings. (Today, high endowment schools already offer a no-loans aid as an alternative to “skin in the game” proposals. Notably, with their sizable endowments, they can afford to educate their entire student body for free by simply investing into 5% risk free US Treasuries.)?

[4] To avoid rushing the test takers and counter proliferation of fake test accommodation requests, College Board should double the test taking time for all, without increasing the amount of tested material. A version of this appears to be on the horizon.

[5] Test optional policy also undeservedly pads university coffers with application dollars while at the same time lowering their admit rates, a nice perk for moving up the selectivity rankings.

[6] Public schools will likely opt to split the in-state and out-of-state applicants into separate buckets, at least in the initial rounds. Similarly, universities that insist on separate admissions for schools of engineering or business may also do the same.

[7] While students whose parents can afford tutoring have it easier and more convenient than others without such resources, clearing the minimum academic requirements with help doesn't improve their admission chances. Furthermore, one doesn’t need expensive tutoring to achieve outstanding standardized test results when a prep book (free at libraries) and the internet is sufficient. But one does need encouragement, determination, and grit.

[8] Importantly, because “elite” schools will continue to be in demand, their low admittance statistics will not suffer. Meanwhile, all schools are guaranteed to reach at least a 33% yield.

[9] Given the overwhelming statistics that most students change their major at least once, the colleges should discourage major declaration until the end of sophomore year and instead insist on broad exploration. Some liberal art schools do this already but more schools should follow their example.

[10] The major shopping is an abhorrent practice that not only allows unethical students to unfairly gain admission (and possibly damage institutional reputation in the long term), but also deprive students genuinely interested in such majors from getting in.

[11] The donors who wish to secure a place for their offspring should instead be content with a massive tax deduction and the vanity of memorialization of their name (in gold letters if necessary) on a building, a bench, or a toilet.

[12] Students of questionable ethics and weak moral character, who under the current system manage to game the process, will also be uniformly dispersed (ahem, diversified), instead of clustering at elite colleges and increasing the chance of reputation damage for the institutions.