In my view it might be possible to distribute resources to a greater extent by making it explicitly a lottery. For instance, a college could assign a "score" to

In my view it might be possible to distribute resources to a greater extent by making it explicitly a lottery. For instance, a college could assign a "score" to each applicant, using their existing process, but then deliberately add a certain amount of random noise to the score. Socially, everybody would know that acceptance was decided by a combination of "merit" (by whatever measure) and luck. The degree of randomness could depend on the school. For instance, community colleges accept virtually 100% of applicants anyway, and a random factor would not change anything.