Prepare: Assign Lottery Weights

SchoolMint lottery weights are like raffle tickets. When the lottery is run, the SchoolMint randomizer will look at all applications that have priorities within a given sub-lottery (ie. all raffle tickets in a hat) and randomly select one application to be assigned Lottery Number 1, then Lottery Number 2, etc.

Sample Lottery Configuration:

Sub-Lottery 1:

• Group 1: Gender - male, weight 100

• Group 2: Priority - female, weight 105

• Group 3: No Priority, weight 1 (must be included in all lotteries as a catch-all)

Since female applicants have 105 tickets per application and male applicants only have 100 tickets per application, a female applicant has a 51% chance of being selected and a male applicant only has a 49% chance of selection. After all lottery numbers are assigned, SchoolMint gives out pre-offers in order of lottery number and based on the number of open seats. 

For example:

Application A (male): tickets 1-100

Application B (male): tickets 101-200

Application C (female): tickets 201-305

Application D (female): tickets 306 - 410

Randomizer draws out tickets and assigns lottery numbers:

1. Female applicants have a 51% chance of being drawn and male applicants have 49% chance of being drawn.
• Lottery Number 1 goes to Application C (female) and tickets 201-305 are removed from the lottery.
2. Total female tickets in the sub-lottery = 105 and male tickets = 200. This means that female applicants have a 35% chance of being drawn and male applicants have a 65% chance of getting drawn next.
• Lottery Number 2 goes to Application A (male) and tickets 1-100 are removed from the lottery.
3. Total female tickets = 105 and total male tickets = 100 so we are back to 51% chance for female applicants and 49% chance for male applicants.
   • Lottery Number 3 goes to Application D (female)
4. Finally, Application B is the only applicant left so he gets Lottery Number 4.

Pre-offers are made based on open seat numbers:

• Given there are only 2 open seats for this school and grade, then Application C and Application A are given pre-offers.
• Application D is first on the waitlist.
• Application B is second on the waitlist.

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