Admissions to elite U.S. colleges: The case for a lottery

It is now late March and there is a considerable amount of anxiety among high school students, particularly those applying to elite colleges, about their admission prospects. To comprehend why the process for selecting applicants at such institutions is in serious need of reform, let us begin by going back to 2016.

Elites in the U.S. were and are legitimately worried about the threat to American democracy posed by the ascent of Donald Trump to the presidency. The political commentator Norm Ornstein and others have argued that the elites do not grasp that the upheavals being witnessed now in the U.S. are basically a political response to a significant political failure. In this regard, why do so many Americans resent the government? According to the political philosopher Michael Sandel, this is because of the technocratic way in which the public good has been conceived and because of the meritocratic way in which winner and losers are defined.

We Americans like to believe that our nation is fundamentally a meritocracy and hence anyone who is willing to work hard can, like cream, rise to the top. Even so, it can certainly be argued that the relentless emphasis on creating a fair meritocracy in the U.S. is ultimately misguided because of the destructive effect it has on the way we interpret our success or the lack of it. In addition, the meritocratic ethic promotes morally unattractive attitudes among both the winners and the losers.

Unlike aristocratic privilege, meritocratic success gives rise to a sense of achievement for having earned one’s place. This notwithstanding, it is important to keep in mind that a society that enables people to rise, and that celebrates rising, pronounces a harsh verdict on those who fail to do so. The economist Robert Frank reminds us that those who are successful in a meritocracy believe themselves to be self-made, they are less generous and public-spirited, and they de-emphasize the important role that luck plays in life.

These sentiments are perhaps best seen in the case of admissions to elite schools including but not limited to the Ivy League institutions. These institutions have now become a sorting machine that promises mobility on the basis of merit but in fact entrenches privilege and promotes attitudes toward success that are corrosive of the commonality that democracy requires. Although the promise of an upwardly mobile society based on merit — that is made by these elite schools — is better than a hereditary hierarchy, this promise does not come with any attendant promise to attenuate inequality in society. On the contrary, this promise legitimizes inequalities that arise from merit rather than birth. In addition, a system that rewards the most talented can and often does undervalue the rest.

We need to change the way in which elite colleges accept students so that accepted students understand that their acceptance is the result of their own efforts, help from parents and frequently coaches, luck, and that they are not necessarily superior to rejected applicants. For the class of 2024, Cornell University, for instance, received 51,500 applications and accepted 5,514, for an acceptance rate of 10.7 percent. Speaking conservatively, at least 10,000 of these 51,500 applicants would succeed at Cornell University. As such, the question about which of these 10,000 qualified applicants to accept becomes nothing less than a crap shoot. So, instead of making accepted (rejected) applicants feel like winners (losers), it would be a lot more honest to recognize that an acceptance to Cornell and other such colleges is essentially like winning a lottery.

Therefore, once a minimum threshold requirement is instituted to reduce the total pool of applicants to a manageable number, the remaining applicants to elite colleges should literally be selected by a lottery. Such a lottery can easily be designed to meet certain goals such as increasing the representation of underrepresented minorities by giving extra lottery tickets to the relevant applicants. Most importantly, the use of such a lottery will make clear what most knowledgeable observers already know: That beyond a point (the minimum threshold requirement), admission to an elite college does not mean that one is better, superior, or more deserving than an applicant who is rejected. What it does mean is that in addition to hard work, successful applicants ought to be thanking their lucky stars.

Batabyal is the Arthur J. Gosnell professor of economics at the Rochester Institute of Technology but these views are his own.