Reply to The list for where to apply in Common Lottery

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Me again ^^, to be clear, what I think you want to know is: for the most popular schools, the way the lottery works this year, does it mean that if you rank a super popular school anything less than #1 you are very possibly blowing your chance at that school?

The reality still is that if 250 people rank it #1 and there are only 7 spots, the odds are still not in anyone's favor of getting in.  BUT, if it's true (and I think it is) that in essence there are almost separate pools of applicants, i.e. everyone who ranked it #1, everyone who ranked it #2, etc, then if I am understanding what I was told, if you rank it #2 and 250 people applied, you don't have any chance of getting better than #251 on the waitlist so, in essence, you're really probably not getting in, because 250 people ahead of you wanted it so badly, they ranked it #1.  In other words, odds that they'll work their way through that list and have 250 people say "no" before you, are non-existent.

Last year, we didn't get into any school just from lotteries, and we did do the DCPS lottery as well.  But one of our best waitlist numbers was for a very good school that we ranked lower than #3 (because we were trying to use our 1-3 for more likely schools), which illustrates my point that as long as we didn't get into one of our 1st choices (and therefore dropped off the list for all schools we ranked lower), we had basically equal odds of getting a good lottery number for all the schools we didn't get into.  NOT SO this year.  We probably wouldn't have had a shot at that really good school we ranked lower, because enough people might have ranked it higher so we would have gotten a particularly crappy waitlist number.

One theory I do have about this year (this is just me guessing, whereas the above was based on an actual conversation with staff of this year's common lottery process), is that for the really good schools that are not quite the superstar, everyone's dying to get in schools, even if you don't rank that school 1 or 2, the odds might be much better that people who rank the "good but not most in demand" like 3 or 4 may have much better odds at getting into a really good school.  But that's just a theory.

Call the common lottery tomorrow if you think the ranking only matters if you get into a school and dropped off the lower ranked lists.  It is more important thank that this year.[/quote]

When I called, I specifically asked about this and they said emphatically that this is not the case. If they did this, they explained, people would have a real incentive to change their rankings to game the system. For example, if I really want to go to Two Rivers but know that without a sibling there, my chance for getting in even ranking it #1 are really slim, then I have an incentive to rank a less-popular school #1, or I will be less likely to get in there because I have ranked it lower (and #1 tankers are more likely to get in). So, under the system you outlined, I might put Bridges at #1 even though it is my #5 choice. They said one of the principles that guided setting up a system was ensuring that there is no incentive to strategically order your choices differently from your true preferences.[/quote]

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