At this time of year an aspiring group of high school seniors have their hopes set on gaining admittance to a university or college of their choice. For some, those aspirations lie with a small number of extremely selective institutions. Their anxieties and their parent’s anxieties may be running high in wondering what more they could have done to increase their chances of acceptance. Yet as they wait for a letter or email informing them of the university’s decision, they are probably unaware of a key factor influencing entrance to Harvard and other elites—luck.
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As I describe in my forthcoming book,
Certainly there are factors that can increase a student’s chances of being admitted. Having high scores and grades is a prerequisite, but other factors also come into play. For example,
In addition, admissions officers will tell you that they are looking for students who are not only highly qualified academically but who also will enrich the campus community. This includes wanting to construct an incoming class that is diverse in terms of race and ethnicity, social class, geographical location, life experiences, and so on. Furthermore, they are seeking young adults who are projected to become leaders in their fields.
All of these are undoubtedly important factors in deciding who will be admitted into highly selective universities such as Harvard. But what they probably will not tell you is that the selection from among this group of applicants is also influenced by another factor—the random factor. To acknowledge this would be to admit that the process is less than completely deliberative and systematic, which it most assuredly is.
Consider the standard procedure for choosing who will be admitted. We can think of this as a weeding out process. The first cut will eliminate any applicants who do not meet the basic requirements that are felt necessary to succeed academically at the institution. These would include grade point average, standardized test scores, rigor of the classes taken in high school, and so on. Frequently a computer program known as an
At this stage other considerations come into play. They include the essay the student has written for their application, along with their extracurricular activities. In addition, larger university concerns are considered like the earlier mentioned desire of having a diverse incoming class or having students to fill a particular need such as the bassoon player for the orchestra or goalie on the soccer team.
Having served on graduate school admissions committees here at
And it is here that the random factor is present. One way of seeing this is that a specific student might be accepted at one highly selective school, but rejected at others. One university may have been looking for something in particular that year which influenced the decision to accept the student, while another university was interested in something else.
But just as important, a final decision could have reflected the mood of the admissions officer on a particular day. The difference between two students may be virtually nonexistent. The selecting of one versus the other might as well have been decided by a coin flip. As
Harvard political philosophy professor Michael Sandel and others have proposed introducing a lottery system to the admissions process at highly selective universities as a straightforward way of simply recognizing randomness for what it is. Such an approach would first remove from the applicant pool those who do not have the basic qualifications to succeed during their four years. This might reduce the numbers at Harvard by 20 percent, leaving perhaps 40,000 applicants.
At this point,
Whether such a procedure will ever be adopted is probably a long shot. But as Sandel points out, “Setting a threshold of qualification and letting chance decide the rest would restore some sanity to the high school years, and relieve, at least to some extent, the soul-killing, resume-stuffing, perfections-seeking experience they have become.”
Sandel’s suggestion is reminiscent of a story often told about the investment banking firm