Centralized Admissions for Engineering Colleges in India

Surender Baswana (), Partha Pratim Chakrabarti (), Sharat Chandran (), Yashodhan Kanoria () and Utkarsh Patange ()
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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

Interfaces, 2019, vol. 49, issue 5, 338-354

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.

Keywords: stable matching; college admission; deferred acceptance; affirmative action; algorithm; implementation; market design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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