Alvin E. Roth, the McCaw professor of economics at Stanford University, is the author of the forthcoming "Who Gets What — and Why." He shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on the theory and practice of market design.

Nowadays, because it’s so easy to submit many applications, competitive colleges get applications from many more qualified candidates than they can admit. Students who apply to many colleges are likely to be accepted by more than one, and so at all but the most elite colleges, admissions officers can’t simply try to pick the best students, but rather must seek to admit the best students who will attend if admitted. The market is congested, but the system is not so badly broken that the colleges will support any major admissions changes.

Right now, admissions officers face the problem of not simply picking the best students, but rather the best students who will attend if admitted.

The system, however, could be tweaked to incorporate a mechanism through which high school students could signal their top two choices. In response to a flooded market for economists, the American Economic Association introduced a signaling mechanism that allows each new Ph.D. to send no more than two signals of interest to potential employers. Sending a signal, when you only have two, adds a strong indication of interest that might otherwise be hard to convey, and helps employers decide whom to interview.



If high school guidance counselors and college admissions officers could develop a similar signaling mechanism — and one that did not require costly campus visits or a “binding early decision” commitment without knowing your financial options — it could help cut through the congestion in college admissions, and let colleges better target whom to admit, freeing applicants from the perceived need to submit so many applications.



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