Should Admissions to Colleges like Harvard, Princeton and Yale be by Lottery?

“Why not?” writes Harvard political philosophy professor Michael Sandel. In his thought-provoking new book, The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?, Sandel addresses what he sees as the misplaced focus on merit in the United States as the main measure of admission to college, particularly to the most selective colleges. He argues that what we think of as self-earned merit, and reward as achievements coming from our own efforts and talents, is also the result of luck -- the culture and socio-economic status of the family we are born into, the economy we graduate into, the mentors who help us -- which all have an effect on whether or not we can acquire “merit.” The college application process determines who has merit by placing value not only on grades, but also on athletics, internships, volunteer positions, international experience, all things that are dependent on a family’s culture and economic resources. The winners in this competition for merit are those high school students whose parents recognize the social value of such extracurricular activities and have the resources to provide them to their children. The losers are high school students who don’t have these benefits.

While working as a college advisor for nearly eight years, in two different high schools -- one private and one public -- I often came into contact with well-meaning organizations that focused on providing enrichment opportunities and scholarships to high-achieving students. These organizations were channelling a limited financial resource to students whose families had already provided extra resources to help them achieve outside the normal school curriculum that educational culture in the US generally rewards students who have already achieved, thanks to the luck of their birth, rather than identifying students who have dreams and potential, but who have not yet had a chance to achieve or show their grit, for reasons that could also be called “luck” -- family culture, financial resources, personal tragedy, poor schools, etc. Perhaps they go to a school that is under-funded and over-crowded, or their parents do not foster a rigorous home culture of educational achievement or work ethic, or the family does not have the financial means or career connections to provide after-school lessons or help the student find a summer program. A student’s parents might be recent immigrants or not have a college degree, so do not know how to navigate the college application process. This process actually begins at the beginning of high school as the most savvy students start building their college resume in 9th grade with enrichment activities, summer internships, and other extras.

Acquiring merit requires an intricate network of advantages and the knowledge that comes from those advantages. Because of the importance that “merit” has come to play in college applications, Sandel argues, colleges now play an oversized role in social sorting, oi determining who enters the top careers and echelons of US society. As many admissions staffers often say, most applicants to top colleges like Harvard are academically qualified to be admitted and excel there. So, Sandel proposes that if the applicant pool to Harvard met a minimum academic standard -- albeit a high one -- then choosing the successful applicants by random lottery would reduce the role extracurricular advantages play in admission, leveling the playing field and expanding the access to Harvard to a wider pool of high schoolers based on a fairer definition of “merit,” one that is less dependent on economic resources. If grades were the measure of qualification to enter the lottery, it would be hard to argue that a family culture emphasizing work ethic was still not key, however, but minimizing the role of extracurricular achievement in admissions would make the process much more fair.

Admissions lotteries for selective educational institutions are not unheard-of in the Washington DC area. In Arlington County, in the name of equity, admissions to all of its specialized public schools is by lottery. And Fairfax County’s nationally-ranked STEM high school, Thomas Jefferson, has been in the news lately as the Fairfax County School Board wrestles with making its admissions process more inclusive of all county residents. The principal option under discussion is an admissions lottery. (Full disclosure: I was on staff at TJ for five years.)

While there are arguments for and against the adoption of a lottery for TJ, one result that might be hard to argue with is that by expanding the amazing resources at TJ to more families in Fairfax County via a lottery admissions system, and thereby reaching students who might not have thought of a STEM career before, a lottery could well be the best way to address one important, but long neglected, element in TJ’s original mission -- namely, to increase the STEM workforce of Northern Virginia.