The psychologist Barry Schwartz has suggested that elite colleges would be better off conducting a lottery rather than the current admissions process. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this proposal in his 2008 book Outliers. Here’s how it would work: “Put people into two categories. Good enough and not good enough. The ones who are good enough get put into a hat. And those who are not good enough get rejected.”
Gladwell calls this proposal “absolutely right.” He notes that in 2008 Harvard rejected 93 out of every 100 applicants, many of whom had identical academic records. Of those rejected, 2,500 had perfect English SAT scores and 3,300 had perfect Math SAT scores. Writes Gladwell: “Is it really possible to say that one student is Harvard material and another isn’t, when both have identical – and perfect – academic records? Of course not. Harvard is being dishonest. Schwartz is right. They should just have a lottery.”
This proposal would certainly save colleges the money, time and energy wasted each year on the pointless process of separating one perfect application from another. Even more important, it would spare students from the misguided notion that their tireless efforts to achieve perfection were in vain. A lottery doesn’t make the system any more just, but at least the randomness of the system would be clear for all to see.
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