Harvard's "Z-list," waitlist admission with a difference

Even Harvard gives favorable attention to legacies (children of alums), you are no doubt shocked to learn. But, right around this time of year, as offers are made off the waiting list, some of those alumni children, and others with certain special late-season Harvard offers, are being given a potentially hard choice: The Back Door to the Yard Z-list: A legacy-heavy special admissions program .

The Z list students are admitted after a year delay, on the unusual condition that they don't attend college anywhere else in the intervening year. The Crimson story (from several years ago) described the program, and found that it included a substantial proportion of legacy students. (emphasis added):

"This group of students, known within Byerly Hall as the “Z-list,” are plucked off the waitlist any time from May to August—after they have accepted offers of admission at other universities—and informed that if they are willing to take a year off, they can enroll at Harvard the following September.Harvard admissions officers say they choose to “Z” students—it’s a verb—when there is a consensus that the College cannot bear to reject them but there is simply no bed available for them immediately after they graduate high school.“There’s no formula to this and there’s not much in common [between Z-list students],” says Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73. “It makes us feel we made some effort to get them here.”But if you talk to enough of these students whom the admissions office makes a special effort to bring to Cambridge, you’ll find they do have something in common: Their parents went to Harvard."
...
"Other top colleges have special admissions programs in which applicants are asked to take time off or enroll elsewhere and then transfer, but no other Ivy requires students to take a year off and gets them to come in such high proportions—a testament to the College’s perennial superiority in admissions.And if a year off makes students more mature and better able to contribute to the College, then the Z-list allows Harvard to placate powerful parents without diluting the quality of its class."
...
"“A very high percentage are alumni cases,” agrees Susan G. Case, a college counselor at Milton Academy, which in some years has sent Harvard a quarter of the Z-list all by itself. “There isn’t necessarily an academic pattern, but it’s usually institutional needs. That’s a phrase they use internally.”"

Harvard's mysterious Z-list

One of the more unusual routes to admission at Harvard is the Z-list, which the Crimson writes about this week. Z-Listed Students Experience Year Off: Undergrads take mandatory gap year before coming to Harvard

Last year I wrote about it here: Harvard's "Z-list," waitlist admission with a difference .

It's that mandatory year off that makes the Z-list unusual (students who enter from the Z-list must delay a year and can't attend another school while they wait).

The mystery is to whom this admissions option is offered, and who chooses to accept. There's some signaling going on here, and some sorting.

University of Chicago adds a Z-list admissions option

The Chicago Maroon reports on an unexpectedly large class of 2016, as applications continue to grow, acceptance rates to fall, and the yield rate (the percentage of accepted students who decide to attend) rose. And Chicago has adopted an unusual admissions option previously seen at Harvard, the Z-list*.

"More students than expected have accepted a spot in the College’s class of 2016, pushing University officials to balance the U of C’s increasing popularity and its commitment to an intimate undergraduate experience.

"The incoming freshman class will comprise approximately 1,525 students, 125 more than the College’s consistent target size, according to University spokesperson Jeremy Manier.

"The number of students who accepted an offer of admission—the “yield rate”—rose to 46.8 percent, up 6.9 percentage points from last year. This is the first year that the yield rate strayed from the 36–40 percent range since 2007, even as the acceptance rate continued to decline.
...
"The College only accepted 20 transfer students, instead of the usual 40 or 50.

"The College is keeping a “z-list” option for the first time, offering applicants admission into the class of 2017 if they first take a gap year. Manier said that between 20 and 30 students are expected to accept that option.
************

*Note that the Z-list option is different from an acceptance simply deferred for a year, because it puts a condition on what the applicant can do in the intervening year (he/she can't enroll in another course of study...)

 HT: Scott Kominers

A look inside Harvard's admissions process

College admissions is a matching process--you can't just study at an elite university, even if you can afford the tuition--you first have to be admitted.

Harvard's admissions process is the subject of a lawsuit, and the discovery process is shedding some light on the deliberations that go on behind the closed doors of the admissions committee.  Here's an account from the NY Times:

‘Lopping,’ ‘Tips’ and the ‘Z-List’: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard’s Admissions Secrets

Now you know some Harvard admissions jargon: "tips" are aspects of a candidates case that might tip him or her over the bar to admission. "Lops" are people tentatively admitted who get lopped off the admit list as it is trimmed to create a class that is balanced the way the admissions office wants.  And the "Z-List" consist of people admitted at the last minute, and required to defer admission for a year, who often have family connections to Harvard.

State laws against price gouging

Michael Giberson provides this list:

State	Year	Notes
Alabama	1996	Code of Ala. § 8-31-1 thru § 8-31-6. LINK Alabama law; Any commodity or rental facility.
Arkansas	1997	A.C.A. § 4-88-301 – 4-88-305.
California	1994	Cal. Pen. Code § 396.
Connecticut	1986	Conn. Gen. Stat. § 42-230.
District of Columbia	2007	D.C. Code § 28-4101 thru 28-4102.
Florida	1992	Fla. Stat. § 501.160.
Georgia	1995	O.C.G.A. § 10-1-393.4.
Hawaii	1983	Haw. Rev. Stat. § 209-9
Idaho	2002	Idaho Code § 48-603; Food, fuel, pharmaceuticals, water.
Illinois	2005	Ill. Admin. Code tit. 14, §§ 465.10 thru 465.30.
Indiana	2002	Ind. Code §§ 4-6-9.1-1 thru 4-6-9.1-7; Fuel.
Iowa	1993	61 IAC 31.1(714); Merchandise needed by victims of disasters.
Kansas	2002	K.S.A. § 50-6,106; Any necessary property or service.
Kentucky	2004	Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann.  § 367.374.
Louisiana	1993	La. R.S. 29:732 LINK Louisiana law.
Maine	2006	10 M.R.S.A. § 1105.
Massachusetts	1990	Md. Reg. Code tit. 940, § 3.18; Petroleum products only.
Michigan	*	Mich. Stat. Ann. § 445.903(1)(z); General consumer code provisions not limited to emergencies.
Mississippi	1986	Miss. Code Ann. § 75-24-25(2).
Missouri	1994	15 CSR § 60-8.030; Necessities.
New Jersey	2001	N.J.S.A. §§ 56:8-107 to 8:109; LINK New Jersey law; Necessities.
New York	1979	NY Gen Bus §396-r.
North Carolina	2003	N.C. Gen. Stat. § 75-38; LINK North Carolina law.
Oklahoma	1999	15 OK St. §§ 777.1 thru 777.5.
Oregon	2007	ORS 401.960 thru 401.970; LINK Oregon law; Essential consumer goods and services.
Pennsylvania	2006	Link Pennsylvania law.
Rhode Island	2012	Rhode Island General Laws §30-15-19; Essential commodities including home heating fuels, motor fuels, food and water.
South Carolina	2002	SC Code 39-5-145.
Tennessee	2002	TCA Title 47 Chapter 18 Part 51; LINK Tennesee Law.
Texas	1995	Tex. Bus. & Com. Code Ann. § 17.46(b)(27) LINK Texas law; Necessities.
Utah	2005	Utah Code § 13-41-101 thru 13-41-202. Link Utah law; Retail goods and services.
Vermont	2006	9 V.S.A. § 2461d; LINK Vermont law; Petroleum or heating fuel product only.
Virginia	2004	Va. Code §§ 59.1-525 et seq., LINK Virginia law; Any necessary goods and services.
West Virginia	2002	W.V. Code § 46A-6J-1
Wisconsin	2006	Wisc. ATCP Ch. 106; Link Wisconsin law.
		List updated November 3, 2012 by Michael Giberson. Please see list of resources below for useful links on price gouging. (http://knowledgeproblem.com/2012/11/03/list-of-price-gouging-laws/

What is the place of Economics in Science?

The AAAS, which publishes Science magazine, has elected a new list of Fellows, 701 in all this year, including several economists (among whom I am one, which is what brought it to my attention):

Section on Social, Economic and Political Sciences

• Howard E. Aldrich, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Nicole Woolsey Biggart, Univ. of California, Davis
• Herbert Gintis, Central European Univ., Hungary
• Randy Hodson, Ohio State Univ.
• Edward Paul Lazear, Stanford Univ.
• Deirdre McCloskey, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago
• Melvin L. Oliver, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara
• Zhenchao Qian, Ohio State Univ.
• Alvin E. Roth, Harvard Univ.
• John Skvoretz, Univ. of South Florida
• Richard Michael Suzman, National Institute on Aging/NIH

I am a long-time subscriber to Science, but not for it's publications in Economics. So I was interested to note that the new Economics Fellows aren't in a section devoted to Economics, but rather one that is apparently devoted to Sociology, Economics, and Political Science.

That doesn't seem like an unnatural grouping, except for the fact that the other Sections seem to concentrate much more narrowly. Here's the list of all 24 Sections:

AAAS Sections

The 24 sections arrange symposia for the Annual Meeting, elect officers, and provide expertise for Association-wide projects.

For a listing of section officers, click on the sections below.

Agriculture, Food, and Renewable Resources (Section O)

Anthropology (Section H)

Astronomy (Section D)

Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences (Section W)

Visit the AAAS Section W Web site

Biological Sciences (Section G)

Visit the AAAS Section G Web site.

Chemistry (Section C)

Dentistry and Oral Health Sciences (Section R)

Education (Section Q)

Engineering (Section M)

General Interest in Science and Engineering (Section Y)

Geology and Geography (Section E)

History and Philosophy of Science (Section L)

Visit the AAAS Section L Web site

Industrial Science and Technology (Section P)

Information, Computing, and Communication (Section T)

Linguistics and Language Science (Section Z)

Mathematics (Section A)

Medical Sciences (Section N)

Neuroscience (Section V)

Pharmaceutical Sciences (Section S)

Physics (Section B)

Visit the AAAS Section B Web site

Psychology (Section J)

Social, Economic, and Political Sciences (Section K)

Societal Impacts of Science and Engineering (Section X)

Statistics (Section U)

I'm reminded of the quote by Keynes:"If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid. " Looking at the list (Dentists have almost their own Section), I can see that we have a way to go, at least in the AAAS and Science.

Interview congestion in the Ophthalmology Residency Match

An ophthalmology residency program surveyed all its applicants on their experience in the match:

Current Applicant Perceptions of the Ophthalmology Residency Match
Michael J. Venincasa, MD; Louis Z. Cai, MD; Steven J. Gedde, MD; Tara Uhler, MD; Jayanth Sridhar, MD

JAMA Ophthalmology May 2020 Volume 138, Number 5 

"Hundreds of individuals apply for ophthalmology residency positions each year using the Centralized Application Services (CAS), administered by San Francisco Residency and Fellowship Matching Services (SF Match). Although the match rate remains relatively stable at approximately 75%, the mean number of applications submitted has risen from 48 in 2008 to 75 in 2019.1,2 In 2010, highly qualified applicants were advised to apply to between 10 and 20 residency programs,3 but more recent studies suggested a target of 45 applications for these applicants and more than 80 for applicants with less competitive qualification.2 The application process represents a considerable financial burden for applicants; in 2018-2019, the CAS application alone cost $685 to apply to 45 programs, which increased to $1910 for 80 programs. These high costs are not unique to ophthalmology. In emergency medicine, the cost of securing a residency position was estimated at $8312 in 2016.4

These trends also come with increasing administrative burden for residency programs tasked with reviewing rising numbers of applications. As a result, many programs have increasingly emphasized quantifiable cognitive measures, such as clinical grades and the US Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) board scores.3 The USMLE Step 1 scores and Alpha Omega Alpha Honors Medical Society membership are factors with statistically significant associations with matching into an ophthalmology residency.5

...

"Respondents applied to a mean (SD) of 76.4 (23.5) ophthalmology residency programs, received 14.0 (9.0) invitations to interview (Figure 1), and attended 10.3 (4.4) interviews. 

...

"When respondents received an interview invitation without the involvement of a wait-list, they most commonly reported receiving the invitation between 3 and 4 weeks prior to the interview date (n = 87 [47.8%]). When instead receiving their invitation from a wait-list (n = 92 [49.7%]), the most common lead time was 1 to 2 weeks prior to the interview date (n = 43 [46.2%]), with 20 (21.5%) invitations arriving less than 1 week prior

...

"Many applicants struggled with scheduling conflicts with other residency programs, where interview dates overlapped or the desired date was filled at the time of invitation response. Certain dates were especially popular for residency programs, with 23 of 116 programs (19.8%) holding interviews on a single day during the 2018-2019 interview cycle.

***********

Note that the Ophtalmology residency match is run by SFMatch, not the larger NRMP, but the growing number of applications and interviews are common to both matching platforms.

Market design course for health policy and medical students, at Stanford, taught by Alex Chan and Kurt Sweat

 Starting tomorrow, a short course in market design:

BIOS 203, Fall 2021: Market Design and Field Experiments for Health Policy and Medicine 

Primary Instructor: Alex Chan chanalex@stanford.edu | Office Hours: By appointment

Secondary Instructor: Kurt Sweat kurtsw@stanford.edu | Office Hours: By appointment

Description. Market design is an emerging field in economics, engineering and computer science about how to organize systems to allocate scarce resources. In this course, we study (1) the theory and practice of market design in healthcare and medicine, and (2) methods to evaluate the impact of such designs. Students will be provided with the necessary tools to diagnose the problems in markets and allocation mechanisms that render them inefficient, and subsequently develop a working toolbox to remedy failed markets and finetune new market and policy designs.

With a practical orientation in mind, we will learn how to construct rules for allocating resources or to structure successful marketplaces through successive examples in healthcare and medicine: medical residency matching, kidney exchange, allocation of scarce medical resources like COVID vaccine and tests, medical equipment procurement, online marketplace for doctors, and, if time permits, reward system for biopharmaceutical innovation. Guest lectures by practicing market designers and C-suite healthcare executives (CEO, CFO) would feature in the course as well.

An important goal of the class is to introduce you to the critical ingredients to a successful design: a solid understanding of institutions, grasps of economic theory, and well-designed experiments and implementation. In the final sessions, students will also learn how to design and deploy one of the most powerful tools in practical market design: A/B testing or randomized field experiments. These techniques are widely used by tech companies like UBER, Amazon, eBay, and others to improve their marketplaces.

At the end of the course, students should have acquired the necessary knowledge to become an avid consumer and user, and potentially a producer, of the market design and field experimental literature (recognized by 4 recent Nobel Prizes in Economics: 2007/2012/2019/2020).

Time & Location.

● Tue, Thu 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM (beginning November 16, 2021) at Encina Commons Room 119

Course Webpage. ● https://canvas.stanford.edu/courses/145148

Schedule and Readings

(* required readings, others are optional)

Session 1. Market design and Marketplaces – November 16

1. * Roth, A. E. (2007). The art of designing markets. harvard business review, 85(10), 118.

2. Kominers, S. D., Teytelboym, A., & Crawford, V. P. (2017). An invitation to market design. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 33(4), 541-571.

3. Roth, A. E. (2002). The economist as engineer: Game theory, experimentation, and computation as tools for design economics. Econometrica, 70(4), 1341-1378

Session 2. Matching Markets: Medical Residents and the NRMP – November 18

1. * Chapter 1 in Gura, E. Y., & Maschler, M. (2008). Insights into game theory: an alternative mathematical experience. Cambridge University Press.

2. * Fisher, C. E. (2009). Manipulation and the Match. JAMA, 302(12), 1266-1267.

3. * National Resident Matching Program. (2021). Feasibility of an Early Match NRMP Position Statement

4. Roth, A. E., & Peranson, E. (1997). The effects of the change in the NRMP matching algorithm. JAMA, 278(9), 729-732.

5. Gale, D., & Shapley, L. S. (1962). College admissions and the stability of marriage. The American Mathematical Monthly, 69(1), 9-15.

Session 3. Kidney Exchange and Organ Allocation – November 30

1. * Wallis, C. B., Samy, K. P., Roth, A. E., & Rees, M. A. (2011). Kidney paired donation. Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation, 26(7), 2091-2099.

2. * Chapter 3 in Roth, A. E. (2015). Who gets what—and why: The new economics of matchmaking and market design. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

3. Gentry, S. E., Montgomery, R. A., & Segev, D. L. (2011). Kidney paired donation: fundamentals, limitations, and expansions. American journal of kidney diseases, 57(1), 144-151.

4. Salman, S., Gurev, S., Arsalan, M., Dar, F., & Chan, A. Liver  Exchange: A Pathway to Increase Access to Transplantation.

5. Sweat, K. R. Redesigning waitlists with manipulable priority: improving the heart transplant waitlist.

6. Agarwal, N., Ashlagi, I., Somaini, P., & Waldinger, D. (2018). Dynamic incentives in waitlist mechanisms. AEA Papers & Proceedings, 108, 341-347.

Session 4. 1 st Half: Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets – December 2

1. * Roth, A. E. (2007). Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets. Journal of Economic perspectives, 21(3), 37-58.

2. * Minerva, F., Savulescu, J., & Singer, P. (2019). The ethics of the Global Kidney Exchange programme. The Lancet, 394(10210), 1775-1778.

3. Chapter 11 in Roth, A. E. (2015). Who gets what—and why: The new economics of matchmaking and market design. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

2 nd Half: Market Design and Allocation during COVID-19 – December 2

1. * Emanuel, E. J., Persad, G., Upshur, R., Thome, B., Parker, M., Glickman, A., ... & Phillips, J. P. (2020). New England Journal of Medicine. Fair allocation of scarce medical resources in the time of Covid-19.

2. Piscitello, G. M., Kapania, E. M., Miller, W. D., Rojas, J. C., Siegler, M., & Parker, W. F. (2020). Variation in ventilator allocation guidelines by US state during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic: a systematic review. JAMA network open, 3(6), e201

3. Schmidt, H., Pathak, P., Sönmez, T., & Ünver, M. U. (2020). Covid-19: how to prioritize worse-off populations in allocating safe and effective vaccines. British Medical Journal, 371.

4. Schmidt, H., Pathak, P. A., Williams, M. A., Sonmez, T., Ünver, M. U., & Gostin, L. O. (2020). Rationing safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines: allocating to states proportionate to population may undermine commitments to mitigating health disparities. Ava

5. Neimark, J. (2020). What is the best strategy to deploy a COVID-19 vaccine. Smithsonian Magazine.

Session 5. 1 st Half: Auction Design and Procurement in Medicine – December 7

1. * The Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. (2020). Improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats. Scientific Background on the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 20

2. * Song, Z., Cutler, D. M., & Chernew, M. E. (2012). Potential consequences of reforming Medicare into a competitive bidding system. Jama, 308(5), 459-460.

3. Newman, D., Barrette, E., & McGraves-Lloyd, K. (2017). Medicare competitive bidding program realized price savings for durable medical equipment purchases. Health Affairs, 36(8), 1367-1375.

4. Cramton, P., Ellermeyer, S., & Katzman, B. (2015). Designed to fail: The Medicare auction for durable medical equipment. Economic Inquiry, 53(1), 469-485.

5. Ji, Y. (2019). The Impact of Competitive Bidding in Health Care: The Case of Medicare Durable Medical Equipment.

6. Thaler, R. H. (1988). Anomalies: The winner's curse. Journal of economic perspectives, 2(1), 191-202.

7. Chapter 2 in Haeringer, G. (2018). Market design: auctions and matching. MIT Press.

2 nd Half: (GUEST LECTURE) Ralph Weber, CEO, MediBid Inc. on “The Online Marketplace for Medicine” – December 7

Session 6. A/B Testing and Field Experiments to Test Designs – December 9

1. * Chapters 1, 4 in List, John. (2021). A Course in Experimental Economics (unpublished textbook, access on course website)

2. * Gallo, A. (2017). A refresher on A/B testing. Harvard Business Review, 2-6.

3. Chan, A. (2021). Customer Discrimination and Quality Signals – A Field Experiment with Healthcare Shoppers.

4. Kessler, J. B., Low, C., & Sullivan, C. D. (2019). Incentivized resume rating: Eliciting employer preferences without deception. American Economic Review, 109(11), 3713-44.

5. Chapters 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 in List, John. (2021). A Course in Experimental Economics (unpublished textbook, access on course website)

6. The Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. (2019). Understanding development and poverty alleviation. Scientific Background on the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019.

Bonus Session (optional). (GUEST LECTURE) Donald Lung, CFO, Antengene on “Designing Markets to Access Biopharmaceutical Intellectual Property Across Regulatory Regimes – the Case of China” – Date TBD

Bonus Session (optional). (GUEST LECTURE) TBD – Date TBD