Bidding, Auctioning, on Higher Education Admissions
College admissions season is one of the most pressing and stressful times for students. Weather your applying as a potential undergraduate, graduate, or even medical student, it comes down to numerous factors cumulating in a single admission. That being said, there are some commonalities that are reflected in each admissions sector. For one, you grades in your current courses would probably hold the most weight, followed by things such as extracurricular activities, recommendations, and demonstrated interest. But this is all from the applicants point of view. Today, I’d like to discuss the idea of admissions from both the applicants and the admitters outlook. An admissions counselor would would gauge things such as the students current abilities, overall potential, and what contributions that student can make to the overall campus environment. Other factors also play an important role in admitting a student, but for this blog post, lets say that all these different gauges come down to a wholistic measure on a students value brought to campus. Which brings us to the main point of this blog post, bidding, auctioning, on various higher education admissions.
When we look at this situation, we can translate it to the idea of auctions. Lets say that for a certain college, you are deciding between weather or not to admit three specific students. You only have 1 admission slot, 1 waitlisted slot, and 1 rejection slot. You as a college are deciding on which student to admit based off a gauge average taken on the “value” that they bring to the campus. In an admissions system where only statistical factors come into play, this would come down to solely on quantifiable measures on a student’s abilities and accomplishments. In that case, the students would be matched according to whatever they can bid, (their value of the school) and how the school values their data driven accomplishments. However, its also very common for students to have other things at their disposal that can indirectly raise their value for the school up. For example, an article on the Los Angeles Times known as “The Legal Way the rich get their kids into college: Huge Donations for four years” brings up this idea of continued sponsoring for increased chances of admissions. According to the article, if a family has enough spare wealth, they can ideally afford different amenities to increase their child’s admissions prospects. Things such as hired admissions counselors and donations to universities would classify as these amenities. Once we go through the different bidding prospects and potentials, colleges would then hand out their offer to the highest bidder. Now, if this wasn’t just a one way street, we can also see the college’s value as another possible choice in deciding admissions. If the bid were to occur in two directions, such that each one would have a choice in the matter. When that is factored in, we have a students immediate valuation of each university as a prime way of deciding admissions. In the end, college admissions isn’t exactly an auction, but certain elements of the process can be reflected within an auction based setting.
Sources:
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-college-admissions-scandal-legal-ways-20190318-story.html
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/03/29/why-not-auction-off-college-seats-highest-bidder-harvard-endowment-manager-asks/Pi9RoqlEiL3wGSkBym0zrK/story.html