"Michael Sandel, in his The Tyrrany of Merit, thinks that, since luck trumps merit in many spheres of life, we might as well adopt a lottery in college admissions. Consequently, he comes up with this proposal for elite universities:
""Of the 40,000-plus applicants, winnow out those who are unlikely to flourish at Harvard or Stanford, those who are not qualified to perform well and to contribute to the education of their fellow students. This would leave the admissions committee with, say, 30,000 qualified contenders, or 25,000, or 20,000. Rather than engage in the exceedingly difficult and uncertain task of trying to predict who among them are the most surpassingly meritorious, choose the entering class by lottery. In other words, toss the folders of the qualified applicants down the stairs, pick up 2,000 of them, and leave it at that."""