This is kinda how medical residency is filled in the US, med students rank their top
choices, residency programs rank their’s. It’s called The Match, and generally results in a very fair equitable outcome.
While the match isn’t completely terrible, it still has some pretty bad qualities. The most notable one is the “pay for applications” issue. The odds of getting into your top picks is constantly declining, and so the dominant strategy is to apply to many residencies to maximize your chance of a successful match - the number of picks the average applicant submits has doubled in the past 15 years. But applying to more programs can cost thousands of dollars, for no apparent reason other than the enrichment of ERAS to the tune of about $100 million per year. This obviously creates a system where people with more money to burn can artificial create better results for themselves.
The simple answer here is to give each applicant a finite number of picks regardless of means, but the ERAS admin has no interest in this for obvious reasons.
The other thing this pick arms race has done is produced far more applicants for positions than makes any sense (the average Otho placement gets 150 applicants). Not only does this irritate program directors, this has also led to an increase in automated filtering, and therefore an increase in attempts to game automated filtering though things like bogus publications (see: things like the stupid medbikini publication which seemed like a poor attempt to add another pub to somebody’s resume).
Your suggestions are terrific and I’m sure there are others that are great too. Every system that involves humans will be game-able in some way, that’s simply life. That The Match is a much better system than college placement is undeniable and refusing to implement it because it’s not perfect is foolish.
Sort of, but if you were charged money per application (so that it was more accessible to the wealthy). The pick was supposed to avoid this sort of pointless mass application and allow students to focus on the residencies that they really wanted and were competitive for, but with higher education becoming so expensive and so competitive, shovelling money at applications has increasingly become the student strategy.
