

Request to econ and math people: solve the Delhi University admission problem - yomritoyj
http://www.jyotirmoy.net/posts/2015-06-26-matching-colleges-students.html

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richdougherty
If you're interested in matchmaking and markets, check out Al Roth's work.
He's been involved in designing matching systems for schools, jobs, organ
transplants and other areas.

Homepage: [http://web.stanford.edu/~alroth/](http://web.stanford.edu/~alroth/)

Blog: [http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com](http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com)

And here's a review of his recent book:
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/matchmaker-make-me-a-
market-1434...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/matchmaker-make-me-a-
market-1434410284). I'm reading it at the moment and it's fascinating.

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qubex
In 1999 I totally flunked my UCAS admissions process in the UK precisely due
to one of the scenarios described herein (aiming slightly too high, getting
zero offers, and then being stuck in the clearing totally random and haphazard
clearing process with various universities competing for an unexpectedly high-
grade candidate). This badly needs addressing.

~~~
batou
It may be comforting to know that I did exactly the same thing a few years
before that and ended up at a shitty university and quit after 6 months. Best
thing I ever did.

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eitally
This is a solved problem in the US, but we traded it for a different problem.
We don't do guaranteed admissions using a score cutoff, except in some cases
at the state level where a specific high school achievement level guarantees
admission to the state university system... or a certain achievement level in
a state's community college system guarantees transfer admission into the
state university system.

The upside is that it puts the power to choose in the hands of the student
(for better or worse -- many students & their families have no idea what
they're doing. See the post from MichaelCrawford about his application
experience.) and mostly eliminates the quota/population problem for schools.
Most universities offer early admission here, which helps them fill a set
number of spots with what they see as top students. One condition of applying
early admission at a lot of schools is that you commit to attending their if
they let you in. Of course, schools still offer admission to many more
students than they know will attend, and I have no idea whether they do this
algorithmically or using tribal knowledge gleaned from previous experiences,
but I have very rarely heard stories of a school having serious difficulties
because they let in too many kids. There have been a few, but the worst that
happened was they had to put up some excess in off-campus apartments or hotels
until attrition shrank the class to the point where campus housing became
available again.

There are other problems with the US method of college admissions, but I
prefer our more holistic process to something as rigid as described in this
post.

~~~
foolinaround
In India, a much smaller proportion of students change their horses mid-
stream... so, if there is excess, it will be a problem throughout the 4 years
or so.

~~~
mvid
Just one year, you would have a smaller class the next year.

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roymurdock
If the process were bad enough that it wasn't producing good results (targeted
enrollment numbers, more donations, larger endowments), universities would
have an incentive to deviate from the cutoff system.

As you describe, the system works the way that it does now. It's not a perfect
system, and people who shoot to high or too low get screwed. That's life -
perfect info, perfect matching, etc. don't exist, especially for a
relationship as complex as the student-college one. There's no clear-cut
signal for which students will be "the best" for colleges and vice versa,
which colleges will benefit the students the most.

We can only try to reduce the number of students who get screwed over by
adding more people to admissions departments, college counselors, reducing
application fees, increasing awareness etc.

Adding more info to the student/college set is expensive. On the college side:
Top college endowments are flourishing and there is no incentive to innovate
at the most prestigious schools. On the student side: parents who can already
pay massive amounts to game the system with private school, private tutors,
admissions experts etc. It is the job of government to reduce the difference
between wealthy and poor students. So an increase in spending on public school
education is necessary, especially with regards to college prep.

The system is built around the information that schools collect from students:
grades and extracurriculars. Unless other types of data are collected and used
as signals during the admissions process (having some kind of score for EQ and
social ability, for example), then nothing will change.

This is a process that happens millions of times per year, hundreds of
millions of times if we see hiring as a similar problem. There is no silver
bullet.

~~~
witty_username
Should social ability determine university admission?

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roymurdock
Let me ask you a question: Should SAT scores determine university admission?

There is no one clear signal for future "success", but it would be hard to
argue that social ability does not contribute to success. Half the reason
people go to college is to pick up social skills and fraternize/network with
other young, talented individuals. If it were possible to quantify, it
definitely wouldn't hurt to consider social skills data alongside academic
ability.

~~~
witty_username
Half the reason people go to college is to pick up social skills and
fraternize/network with other young, talented individuals.

So then perhaps it should be targeted for low EQs so that they can improve?

~~~
roymurdock
_If_ they can improve.

How can you tell whether a student with bad grades is smart and underachieving
(possibly coachable/teachable) or just not that smart/not able to grasp
concepts? Colleges will not spend the resources and take the chance. There are
plenty of applicants with good grades: admitting these applicants is safe.

It would be the same argument for EQ.

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matvavna
The problem with the Gale-Shapley algorithm for stable matching is that it's
inherently unfair. The askers/proposers slowly get downgraded to their lowest
possible match, while the other side slowly moves up to their highest possible
match. Not sure how different the outcome would be from the current system.

Which actually brings me to another point: The GS algorithm is roughly that
members of one party(in this case the schools) work down their list of
preferences, asking members of the other party(the students) to partner with
them. The members of the other party always say yes to their first match, and
will always leave their current match when someone higher on their list asks
them to be partners. Sounds pretty similar to the system currently in place in
India.

A final note on the GS algorithm: If an anecdote told by a professor of mine
is correct, this has been tried before. It was how hospitals chose their
residents after med school, but it was set up so the hospitals always got the
best match. I believe the students sued them.

edit:formating

~~~
tgokh
In 1995, the system was updated to make it applicant-friendly rather than
hospital-friendly

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Resident_Matching_Pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Resident_Matching_Program)

~~~
matvavna
Thanks for the link. I wasn't sure how true the story was.

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fezz
Drop the cutoff system completely or partially. The top scoring students
aren't necessarily all the students you want.Quite often the gems are hidden
throughout the spectrum. Selective breeding for people good at grades and
tests isn't going to get you the people with the most potential for the
future.

~~~
yummyfajitas
How do you reliably and objectively identify the gems?

Note that an American-style "holistic" system is unnecessary since India
explicitly allows racism into the process (so no need for convoluted schemes
to hide it).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India#Governmen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India#Government_funding_allowing_reservations_in_colleges.2Funiversities)

~~~
piyush_soni
As much as I hate the Reservation system in Indian colleges, I wouldn't call
that 'racism'. They are two different things. They are trying to _mitigate_
the effects of a _possible racism_ by doing this. Just that they don't
understand they have to give that reservation advantage to them _really_ early
in life - not while admitting students for Doctor and Engineer degrees.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The fact that one might allude to cancelling one bit of racism with another
doesn't make it not racism. (I'm defining "racism" as "discrimination based on
race", not "any cause for a statistical disparity" as some other people do.)

I must say that I do prefer the Indian system to the US system, however. It's
at least explicit and can be debated on merits. The purveyors of the US system
are secretive so as to prevent opponents from gathering facts to argue against
it.

~~~
ejstronge
I think you (and others) have espoused this viewpoint in other threads.

I'll just say that having an outsider (perhaps a politician) re-appropriate
words that have a clear, technical definition (say surveillance or security)
must be frustrating for experts who understand those words.

Redefining a well-understood technical word is a good rhetorical technique but
side steps whatever logic underlies the word's original defintion.

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harigov
This seems to be very similar to the dating problem. Instead of asking
students to give preference on college/course combination, maybe they should
be asked about what matters most to them. Are they looking for a college close
to their home, are they looking for a course that has many career options or
are they looking for something they are passionate about, etc., Colleges could
go through a similar set of questions and then you can build a machine
learning algorithm that uses this information to match a college and student.
It may not be straightforward but a few iterations of questions (or features
in ML terms) can build a pretty robust model.

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theneelpatel
In Gujarat,India , we do have mock round before allocating actual admission to
an undergraduate student. So student can have rough idea about where s/he can
have proper idea about where he may get admission. After mock round there is
seat allocation round; this is final round where all students get seat
allocation. Now if a student is unhappy with the admission then s/he can opt
for the next round and now the next round will be only for the vacant seat
which are available from whoever opted for this round. This process is usually
done for another two rounds after main seat allocation round. This all things
are done through online account.

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e12e
I'm not familiar with Gale-Shapley -- but maybe exploiting the new on-line
nature of the application process would be good.

Have students rank, say 5 subjects and 5 colleges -- do a cut-off, and allow
those cut to change or keep their choices (along with listing open positions
after the current round).

Run the cut-off twice a day, for 20 days. If things don't balance out after 40
rounds, I suppose an entirely different system _is_ needed.

I'm sure this could be modelled first, to check the viability.

~~~
yomritoyj
But then you are asking students to collectively act out an algorithm. Why not
leave it to a machine?

~~~
e12e
We could assume that each student has as close to perfect knowledge about
his/her preferences as is attainable. The student will have to work to
communicate that to the system one way or another -- I'm suggesting that using
several rounds might mean less work (and/or less unpleasant work) for the
students, than if they have to fill out an impossible number of
choices/preferences upfront -- just so the system have the data it needs to
complete in one round. Which would be optimizing the wrong part of the problem
(or even the wrong problem).

No matter how interesting the problem might be from an algorithmic point of
view.

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foolinaround
I believe that financial incentives can be added to the mix.

Colleges that are looking for a certain profile of students can provide a
discount x% of their fees.

This is shown to the student who can similar rank the colleges for this.

On the other side, a student should not be allowed to pay his way in, so might
be problematic?

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murbard2
Ask students to submit their preferences as a piece of code returning a score.

The problem is now outsourced to third parties who will build tools to
generate scoring functions intuitively, for example based on constraints, or
based on matching you with the preferences of similar students etc.

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ehosca
trade matching algos might work here.

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taki1
and just one question: who the hell are the "econ" people?

~~~
crayola
Economists.

~~~
taki1
"Economists people" \-- is that still English?

how are you so sure about plural too, huh?

Econ -> Econs , no?

~~~
jameshart
Are you just here for a fight?

"Econ people" is short for "Economics people". Another word for "Economics
people" would be "Economists", but it might also include people who have an
interest in economics but don't consider themselves economists.

And as for the plural, An "econ person" would be an economist. The OP
specified "Econ people".

Calm yourself down a bit.

