For the moment, I’ll ignore the expectation that decision makers consider costs/consequences of actions, even if the specific costs/consequences are not explicitly repeated in every post. Due to the Harvard lawsuit, we have more information about admit rate by income for different groups at Harvard and how that admit rate and can better estimate how admit rate would change if parts of the application were made optional at Harvard than at other “top schools,” so I’ll use Harvard as an example.
The Harvard internal study at http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-421-157-May-30-2013-Report.pdf lists the admit rate by income level, which is summarized below. I only listed non-URMs to minimize variables.
Harvard Admit Rate for Class of 2009-16
White Students – Low income* has 12% admit rate, Others have 10% admit rate
Asian Students – Low income* has 10% admit rate, Others have 7% admit rate
International Students – Low income* has 8% admit rate, Others have 6% admit rate
*Harvard considers less than US ~median income as “low income”
Note that low income applicants at Harvard have a higher average admit rate than applicants who are not low income. So if the admission for the specified classes was done by a purely lottery system without considering the application at all, then the average admit rate for low income kids would go down. Admission by pure lottery that does not consider applicant does not guarantee an increase in representation of lower income kids. Instead you’ll have more effective results by considering how specific admission criteria/consideration/hooks are correlated with income. I am ignoring feedback effects or the purposes of this example, which no doubt would influences results.
However, making everything optional does not mean a purely lottery admission system. A pure lottery would be making the admission fully blind, not fully optional. Making everything optional means that applicants can pick and choose which criteria to submit to the college. The college presumably will not admit any applicant who chooses to submit nothing, but applicants can choose to submit only the criteria in which they excel and not submit criteria in which they do poorer than expected based on the rest of the application. For example, the kid who has great grades+scores, but was obnoxious and insulting in his classes can choose to not submit LORs. Or the kid who has great grades+scores, but doesn’t want to take the time to write take the time to write essays for individual colleges can choose to not submit essays. It’s not a given that making an admission criteria optional like this means % low income kids will go up. Rather than indiscriminately making everything optional, if the goal is to increase lower income kids, you need to consider which groups are likely to do poorly on the optional criteria and do well on the remaining criteria that will be considered.
For example, suppose Harvard went GPA optional instead of test optional this year. By “GPA optional”, I mean the college can see the course rigor, number of AP classes, and such; but does not see grades – only pass or fail. The winners in a GPA-optional system would be kids who have great scores and other parts of the application, but their GPA is lower than expected based on their high scores and great other parts of application. I’d expect Harvard applicants who have great scores, but weaker GPA than expected by their great scores to be primarily high income applicants rather than low income students. So I’d expect if Harvard went GPA optional instead of test optional this year, there would be an increase in representation of high income kids and decrease in representation of low income kids. If the goal is to increase low income kids, I expect you want to make GPA required and make the optional parts areas where low income kids are likely to do worse than expected based on GPA, like scores.