Lottery admissions: Are they feasible in an anti-DEI environment?

The fall of affirmative action and political push to close DEI offices are forcing more colleges and universities to reexamine how they can support a diverse student body without running into state compliance trouble. Lottery admissions might be a solution, a report by Acuity Insights suggests.

Lottery admissions introduce an “element of randomness” into the applicant selection process. One of the most predominant methods used internationally is the “threshold lottery.” This fall, for example, the School of Medicine at Queen’s University in Canada will blindly select a predetermined number of students from a pool of applicants who meet designated GPA, MCAT and Acuity Insight’s Casper assessment test scores. The latter measures a student’s social intelligence, such as ethics and professionalism.

Moreover, a variety of lottery systems have been used in Dutch medical schools on and off over the past 50 years, and U.S. pundits have long imagined their implementation domestically, The Atlantic reports.

“If the rubric is crafted to include non-academic indicators, this approach reduces the risk of individual metrics overshadowing other qualities, ensuring all aspects of an applicant’s candidacy are considered, including lived experience and soft skills,” the report reads.

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The report provided an example of two students being reviewed for admission at a hypothetical college. The first-generation student forced to work on weekends was ultimately not selected because the college favored the wealthier legacy student with ample time for extracurricular activities. Acuity Insights proposed that lottery admissions would reduce the impact of these socioeconomic disparities.

“[A]s the Varsity Blues scandal showed a few years ago, the elite admissions race isn’t just about who can craft the perfect application, but who has the means and the connections to sidestep the process altogether,” Bryan Walsh, editorial director of Vox, wrote in a column.

Addressing concerns about lottery admissions

Fairness and integrity are crucial in lottery admissions, Acuity Insights contends. As a result, any admissions teams considering using a lottery must ensure students have confidence in the institution’s commitment to fairness, inclusivity, academic standards and transparency, the firm advises

Colleges and universities can combat this by:

• Evaluating how lottery admissions align with current practices and policies. Ensure compliance with legal and ethical standards to maintain consistency and coherence in the admissions process.
• Regularly evaluating and monitoring the lottery process.  Revise criteria and update evaluation methods if needed.
• Increasing transparency. Inform applicants that lotteries may result in the higher-scoring applicants not being selected and proactively address these grievances.