<p>Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley won the Nobel Prize this year. Their work has led to win-win solutions in many fields linclude the NRMP match for doctors seeking residency position, matching program for organ transplantation, matching for some school systems.</p>
<p>When will colleges and universities stop making excuses and adopt a similar matching system for college applications? </p>
<p>At first glance, a college matching system would appear to me to hamper top colleges’ desire to reach the out of the way student. It’s difficult already to get top rural or urban or URM applicants. A college application matching system will enact another barrier to these kids. Therefore unless a super-Questbridge system could be developed alongside an omnibus college admissions matching system, you won’t find support from top Private colleges for such a venture. </p>
<p>Also, you’d hamstring them into declaring their quotas for internationals, athletes, etc and all that can do is bring bad publicity.</p>
<p>The other problem it would create would be to force colleges to charge a standard price. The internship match program works in part because what students will earn at a particular hospital is transparent and standardized, at least for that institution. Colleges, with need-based financial aid and “merit” scholarships (discounts) charge different amounts to different students. They could still do that in a match system, but students would not be able to compare offers, and would be at a significant disadvantage in trying to play one college off against another.</p>
<p>WHy? What’s to gain? Is there a major problem with smart kids not being able to get good educations? Who’s to say that the solution would be better?</p>
<p>Residency match is completely different. For one, residents are paid, versus college students who are paying.</p>
<p>Agree that while in theory its a nice idea to consider a college matching service, in reality its is impractical for many of the reasons mentioned above.</p>
<p>In medicine, etc, most applicants under consideration are interviewed as part of the matching process. This would probably be untenable for applicants at the undergrad level, even if it was done via skype rahter than face to face.</p>
<p>And as others have said, since merit and FA are big factors in the undergrad admissions process, how would this work in a matching system??</p>
<p>Pizzagirl has it right: This idea is attractive to a very thin slice of college applicants, the ones who are submitting 20 applications to highly selective colleges. The vast majority of college-bound students submit one application, or maybe two, and experience little or no anxiety about where they want to go to college – at least after they decide where to apply – and whether they will be accepted. </p>
<p>I know it’s painful to see your smart, wonderful, achieving children tied up in knots by the process of applying to ultraselective colleges, but from the standpoint of the world it’s not a problem that’s crying out for a solution. There’s a lot of wasted energy and emotion, sure, but it all happens in six months or so, and there’s pretty much a happy ending for anyone who goes into the process with a modicum of thought and humility.</p>
<p>Huh? The vast majority of high school seniors are happy to attend their local, instate college.</p>
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<p>Ummm, because there is no need? (And don’t forget about financial aid.)</p>
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<p>Small nit, but I wold suggest that the number is closer to 15 colleges. Lop of the few that have 70% yields (we can assume that H, Y, & S get who they want), and add in the special schools (MIT & Caltech, who also get who they want based on a self-selecting app pool), and were down to ~15 (with #15 not an extremely difficult admit, at least relative to the top few).</p>
<p>It’s always kind of interesting to me to see upper-middle class parents assume their situations / worries are anything close to universal. Which is what teeth-gnashing over this process is. It’s a Short Hills and Grosse Pointe problem, not a real national problem. Anyway, the problem of not enough diamonds-in-the-rough being found is a FAR larger problem IMO than anxiety levels at Short Hills cocktail parties.</p>
<p>For colleges admissions, along the lines of what JHS said, the money issue makes it difficult to make it similar to the residency program. At the onset the applicant has no way knowing exactly how much he will have to pay or take a loan for at the different schools. I may prefer go to Case Western versus Pitt, but only if Case funds me x thousand dollars, and right now you don’t get that info till later in the game.</p>
<p>This thin slice is a much larger total number of applicants than are applicants for residency programs nationwide. Huge amounts of time and money are wasted because of the inefficiency of the current college admissions process. </p>
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<p>These concerns can be addressed by incorporating a weighting system of priorities specified by both parties. College X could specify “We are willing to admit Billy but without financial aid, while we can admit Francine if she pays half tuition and room/board expenses”. Billy and Francine would also specify the terms under which they would be willing to attend College X vs College Y, and so on. Basically students and families would get to ‘name a price’ for each college. ensuring that there aren’t a lot of situations where someone gets in to a college but can’t afford it. Sort of like Priceline. </p>
<p>If set up correctly the system would also allow colleges to maximize the positive impact of their financial aid dollars.</p>
<p>Many of the other preferences could be systematically weighed in.</p>
<p>A matching program does not need to be an all-inclusive one. Colleges would be free to participate or not, and to only allocate a certain number of admission slots to the match. This was also true of the residency programs in the past, but eventually the vast majority of programs saw the benefits of participation.</p>
<p>For ‘the vast majority of high school students’ who apply to just one college or two, and are guaranteed admission, well, it would be a very simple process- you submit your rank list with your one or two colleges of choice in the ranking and you get in. What may happen, though, is that there would be more people willing to take what they consider to be a long shot and also rank a college they would prefer to attend, but don’t think they’d ever get into, at least not with sufficient financial aid. A match would allow them to take such chances without penalties.</p>
<p>As a veteran-survivor (with my daughter) of the NYC high school admissions matching system, which was assisted by one of the Nobel Prize winners, I can say: NO THANK YOU! Pay attention to the man behind the curtain! Too many variables for sure.</p>
<p>It would seem to me that this would overly privilege those who can be full-ride anywhere, who could say they’d pay $100K / year for Harvard. </p>
<p>The other thing is - residency programs aren’t particularly concerned with diversity in the sense of oboe players and newspaper editors and ballet dancers and people from farms. They can set objective criteria and put their impressions of the interview down as one of those objective criteria (e.g., you could get a max of 10 points by how well you interviewed). But it’s no skin off their back if they get 20 of the exact same kind of student as long as he / she is good enough for the residency program.</p>
<p>Why would that be a good thing? Does the system need MORE people applying to Harvard for whom Harvard is a long shot and they can’t afford it anyway without lots of aid?</p>
<p>Why is there an assumption that the actual system does NOT work, and that a different system would be more efficient or cheaper? Does anyone believe that the level of preparation would be lesser in a matching system? </p>
<p>The reality is that the system does work … very well, except for an incredibly small number of applicants. Most students do not find it necessary to apply to dozens of colleges. Most students get in their first to third choices. The fact that the Ivy League and MIT/Stanford reject 90 percent of applications (nor necessarily applicants) is trivialized by the rather pedestrian admission numbers at most colleges and universities.</p>
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<p>Another reality is that students who were not accepted at their “dream” school often report to be overjoyed at their final destination, and often claim it was the best thing that happened to them. </p>
<p>Perhaps we should give more credit to the maligned adcoms and consider that they actually do know what is best for their school and the …applicants.</p>
<p>The assumption that the system does not work is predicated on believing that there are “better” classes out there than what is currently being admitted - that “not the most deserving” students are getting in. If that were the case, you’d find a) “lower” schools having higher stats, since they are accepting all the unfairly-rejected-at-Harvard geniuses, and b) the universities would be adjusting their criteria. They seem to be happy with their criteria and the classes they receive, and it’s their decision.
(And now cue the tiresome … but there are legacies, and URM’s, and athletes, blah blah blah. If they hurt the experience and the stats so badly, they wouldn’t be admitted.)</p>