As if it’s not effectively like that already:
Paywall. Any other link?
Nice opinion but it’s just that and really doesn’t add much to the admissions game. Just brings up othe same old stuff.
It isn’t like that already. If you go in thinking it is, you will be disappointed!
Same old, same old. The author doesn’t seem to realize how holistic does work. But understands what will get a rise in the WaPo readership. The simple fact of a byline doesn’t make one an authority.
Why don’t these folks cry out for the Common App to restrict the number of apps a kid can submit? Make them think.
Easily avoided paywall.
Delete your browsing history. Close your browser – all the windows. Open a new window. You should be able to access the article. In fact, you can access 10 of them before the paywall shows up again and you have to delete your browsing history again.
This works for the Washington Post and the New York Times, but not the Wall Street Journal, which has a real paywall.
Or just open a new incognito window in Chrome.
Or just use a different browser.
Or pay. Support good journalism. Without it, we’re screwed.
Digital subscription to WaPo is $9.99/month.
If you have Amazon Prime, I think it is less than that.
Agree about the Common App- kids are applying to many colleges, because they can.
Holistic admissions isn’t always transparent, but it isn’t random the way a lottery would be.
Navel gazing and hand ringing about holistic apps at a small number of schools seems like a privileged place to be when there are plenty of kids qualified for schools like this who can’t even apply because of the finances.
Schools need diversity to build a community in terms of interests, academics, races, religions. SE, etc. It serves all the students there to have that diversity. That makes much more sense than a random draw.
Thank you for that info! 6-month free trial and only $3.99/month after that. I already signed up. 
Super-selective college admissions can look random to an outsider (i.e. most applicants, parents, counselors, teachers) because some of the important application characteristics (e.g. essays, recommendations) are not visible to outside observers or easily compared to those of other applications to the college. However, insiders (i.e. people doing admissions reading at the college) do see and compare all of these aspects of applications from the entire pool, so they can see that the selection is not random.
The relative visibility and comparability to outsiders of various aspects of the application affects how people perceive their relative importance. For example, SAT/ACT scores are the most visible and comparable aspect of the application, so many posters here tend to highly value them when trying to assess chance of admission, even though they may be only a small part of what the college considers.
I disagree. I had never seen the observation that doing admissions with a lottery would give social scientists a tool that they don’t currently have that would allow them to better measure a school’s “value add.” Likewise, I particularly liked the question he posed (though he framed it as binary when it isn’t), is the professoriate making better outcomes better or is admissions just give them better raw material?
WaPo is $4 a month if you have Prime - after the free trial.
I read the piece and thought it was semi-interesting but mostly thought it will never work. Orchestras without oboes and all that 
Though lottery sounds extreme, (and of course it would just be a thought experiment), it does resonate with many folks because the “holistic” approach is opaque at best and downright unfair at worst to many hard working, intelligent students who are from average families without legacy/loads of money. It is very difficult to convince people that elite colleges choose their students based on merits when so many of them were chosen “randomly” - winning the “ovarian lottery” at birth.
It’s an application. All "hard working, intelligent " kids need to try to understand what their targets look for, not just what the kid wants. They should realize merit is more than sending a transcript and club titles or awards.
That is, if you want an elite.
@makemesmart In Britain, we’ve been down this route of non-holistic admissions and admissions supposedly based only on “objective” criteria like A-level results. It didn’t work because there were still far too many students with the “best” results applying for a limited number of places. So they eventually began informally considering other things. Added to the fact that even examinations read by people–unlike America’s machine scored tests–have their flaws as attested to by the high number of “regrades”, and I think holistic admissions is the best answer. Admissions decisions are made by people, and so will never be scientific. Best advice: apply to a broad range of universities and don’t ever think you are a shoo-in.
It’s about assembling an interesting class. It is not about the individual. A lottery would not achieve the goal of a class made up of individuals with varied interests and talents that can interact and contribute to the mix.