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Centralized Admissions for Engineering Colleges in India

Author

Listed:
  • Surender Baswana

    (Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur 208016, India;)

  • Partha Pratim Chakrabarti

    (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, India;)

  • Sharat Chandran

    (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India;)

  • Yashodhan Kanoria

    (Columbia Business School, New York, New York 10027;)

  • Utkarsh Patange

    (Columbia Business School, New York, New York 10027)

Abstract

We designed and implemented a new joint seat allocation process for undergraduate admissions to over 500 programs spread across 80 technical universities in India, including the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Our process is based on the well-known Deferred Acceptance algorithm; however, complex affirmative action seat reservations led us to make a number of algorithmic innovations, including (1) a carefully constructed heuristic for incorporating nonnested common quotas that span multiple programs, (2) a method to utilize unfilled reserved seats with no modifications to the core software, and (3) a robust approach to reducing variability in the number of reserved-category candidates admitted, while retaining fairness. Our new seat allocation process went into production in 2015; based on its success, including a significant and provable reduction in vacancies, it has since remained in successful use and has been improved continually.

Suggested Citation

  • Surender Baswana & Partha Pratim Chakrabarti & Sharat Chandran & Yashodhan Kanoria & Utkarsh Patange, 2019. "Centralized Admissions for Engineering Colleges in India," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 49(5), pages 338-354, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:49:y:2019:i:5:p:338-354
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.2019.1007
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Parag A. Pathak & Alvin E. Roth, 2013. "Matching with Couples: Stability and Incentives in Large Markets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(4), pages 1585-1632.
    2. Atila Abdulkadiroğlu & Parag A. Pathak & Alvin E. Roth, 2005. "The New York City High School Match," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 364-367, May.
    3. Avinatan Hassidim & Déborah Marciano & Assaf Romm & Ran I. Shorrer, 2017. "The Mechanism Is Truthful, Why Aren't You?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 220-224, May.
    4. Alvin E. Roth, 2002. "The Economist as Engineer: Game Theory, Experimentation, and Computation as Tools for Design Economics," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1341-1378, July.
    5. Manjunath, Vikram & Turhan, Bertan, 2016. "Two school systems, one district: What to do when a unified admissions process is impossible," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 25-40.
    6. John H. Kagel & Alvin E. Roth, 2000. "The Dynamics of Reorganization in Matching Markets: A Laboratory Experiment Motivated by a Natural Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(1), pages 201-235.
    7. Itai Ashlagi & Mark Braverman & Avinatan Hassidim, 2014. "Stability in Large Matching Markets with Complementarities," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 62(4), pages 713-732, August.
    8. Elliott Peranson & Alvin E. Roth, 1999. "The Redesign of the Matching Market for American Physicians: Some Engineering Aspects of Economic Design," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 748-780, September.
    9. Péter Biró & Sofya Kiselgof, 2015. "College admissions with stable score-limits," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 23(4), pages 727-741, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Aue, Robert & Klein, Thilo & Ortega, Josué, 2020. "What happens when separate and unequal school districts merge?," ZEW Discussion Papers 20-032, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    2. Afacan, Mustafa Oğuz & Evdokimov, Piotr & Hakimov, Rustamdjan & Turhan, Bertan, 2022. "Parallel markets in school choice," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 181-201.
    3. Aditya Kuvalekar, 2022. "Matching with Incomplete Preferences," Papers 2212.02613, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.
    4. Ágoston, Kolos Csaba & Biró, Péter & Kováts, Endre & Jankó, Zsuzsanna, 2022. "College admissions with ties and common quotas: Integer programming approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 299(2), pages 722-734.
    5. Tayfun Sonmez & M. Bumin Yenmez, 2022. "Constitutional Implementation of Affirmative Action Policies in India," Papers 2203.01483, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.
    6. Itai Ashlagi & Amin Saberi & Ali Shameli, 2020. "Assignment Mechanisms Under Distributional Constraints," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 467-479, March.
    7. Anay Mehrotra & Bary S. R. Pradelski & Nisheeth K. Vishnoi, 2022. "Selection in the Presence of Implicit Bias: The Advantage of Intersectional Constraints," Papers 2202.01661, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2022.
    8. Yuri Faenza & Swati Gupta & Xuan Zhang, 2022. "Discovering Opportunities in New York City's Discovery Program: Disadvantaged Students in Highly Competitive Markets," Papers 2203.00544, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2023.
    9. Orhan Aygün & Bertan Turhan, 2023. "Priority design for engineering colleges in India," Indian Economic Review, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 5-15, July.

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