Lottery numbers will be revealed this season for middle school and high school placement.
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By Joyce Szuflita
Counter to my speculation earlier this year (It happens), I have gotten conclusive confirmation from the Director of Enrollment that random numbers will be released before the application deadlines this fall. I suppose more information is good news, but I feel this information is only helpful to the few people who have exceptionally good numbers and the few people who have exceptionally bad numbers. It will be inconclusive for most of the rest of you, because we don’t have any accurate data that will tell you what your number will actually mean for any particular school. There will be a lot of panic (don’t panic) and magical thinking. Keep your heads and stay steadfastly prudent in collecting your lists. And as always - RANK IN TRUE PREFERENCE ORDER. The reason we can’t jump to conclusions is that this is a huge process with many factors and no historical data about what an individual number might mean. The high school process, for example, includes around 65,000 students, spread over 5 boroughs, applying to 700 high school programs with very different admissions criteria.
So lets break this down.
There is one “lottery”. This random “number” is the tie breaker in any admission criteria. Sometimes it is the only criteria for a school, as in the D15 middle schools or for high schools with the “Open” admissions. From Amelie Marian’s great article explaining this all, “using a single lottery number for all schools is something that the DOE got right. Counterintuitively, the literature shows that using the same number for all schools does not penalize students, instead it slightly increases their chances of matching to their top choice. In a single number system, students with a good lottery number are more likely to be assigned to their preferred school, but if schools hold separate lotteries, to get their top school, students have to receive a (lower odds) good lottery number at their preferred school. “
You will be able to find your number in your MY SCHOOLS profile at some point after admission season opens. For high school Oct. 12 and for middle school Oct 26. Read more about the random numbers on the DoE website here.
When a school has an academic screen (like grades), if there are more people who have the same stats (same grade range so they are considered to have equal priority), then the “lottery” will indicate how they will be ordered in that priority.
The lottery number is a hexadecimal (an amazing word) ‘number’ containing 32 characters. Amelie- “The numbers are compared left to right, in increasing order: from 0 to f (0–9 then a-f). This means that the first character is enough to give you a rough idea of how good your number is: a lottery number that starts with 0 is in the first 1/16th (6.25%), one that starts with F in the last 1/16th.”
Amelie did write another article with results from surveys that she conducted last year and it is always fascinating to read her, but her survey results won’t be much help this year because of the significant change in screened admission criteria between last year and this year. For high school, last year the DoE’s screened Group 1 was estimated to include around 60% of students in the grade (39,000ish). This year’s narrower grade range is estimated to include possibly 20% of the grade (13,000ish). That significantly improves the chances of students who have average grades of 90 or above, but it is still a huge group of kids. If you are applying to a small school with a 50:1 applicant to seat ratio, that prioritizes 66% of seats for FRPL students (and you are not in that cohort) do you feel your chances are good just because your Group 1 cohort is 13,000, rather than 39,000? It doesn’t make me feel too much better.
As you can imagine, my email has been blowing up with families who have come to my talks and consults asking how the new screened information and knowledge about their lottery number should change the way they create their lists. My advice remains the same.
For high school, the change in the screened grades range makes that cohort relatively smaller, but when the app:seat ratios are so high, it is still a crap shoot in my opinion.
If you have a SUPER good lottery number, you can be a little more aspirational in your list. If you have a SUPER bad number, you should be more conservative, but for 80% of numbers in the middle, my advice stays exactly the same: make a diverse list and then RANK SCHOOLS IN TRUE PREFERENCE ORDER.
For middle school, you can have some small highly popular citywide or boroughwide schools, but don’t go crazy and load your list with them. Double down on your district choices and rank as many as you can. Different districts have different numbers of schools available, so not everyone will be able to find 12 schools to rank. If you are in a district with a lot of schools like D15, rank 12 (mostly district schools but including some citywide and boroughwide if you like). The DoE doesn’t have to place you in a school from your list, so you want to let them know the FULL range of schools you would consider. If you are unlucky and they can’t place you from your list, they will place you in a school in your district of residence. Don’t make a crazy list that lets them choose for you.
For high school, rank 12 programs. Have some reaches, but not too many. Have schools with different admissions criteria, some just screened by grades, some essays, some auditions if you can, possibly some ed opt options, some worthy schools with lower app:seat ratios. There is no way to engineer this. Remember, this is a huge group of kids who are all ranking different programs in different order. Many will be placed in schools that they preference which will take them out of the mix for schools that you preferenced. There is A LOT going on here that is beyond our ability to predict. This algorithm won the Nobel prize in Economics in 2012. It does a lot right if you will let it.
