Someone once seriously proposed making the final determining decision for who gets into Harvard be based on...a random drawing. (From an oversized pool of qualified applicants.)
The idea was students wouldn't go through the rest of their life thinking they'd prevailed in a meritocracy, and had earned and deserved every bit of their future success. They'd always have to acknowledge: some of it was pure luck.
If you believe the pool of qualified candidates is much bigger than the student body for a school like this (pretty easily supportable, imo) then this is also obviously a good idea - if the primary purpose of the school is to provide a great education to any qualified individuals who exist.
I don't think any reading of the history of the ivy's and similar schools can really support the latter.
I imagined something totally different when you mentioned "a random drawing".
Perhaps they could submit 3 drawings, one of which would be randomly chosen.
All drawings would be displayed in a gallery, with a critic deciding which they like and which they dislike. A scribe would trail the critic with a notepad, writing down their critiques and informing the applicants why their drawing was declined or accepted.
It's an excellent idea for people who want to go to Harvard, and maybe even society at large, but a terrible idea for people who have gone to Harvard. And for Harvard.
And Harvard cares about the latter a lot more than it does about the former.
It essentially already is a random drawing... at those acceptance rates, you're getting admitted or rejected because the orchestra needed a flute player, or because the admissions officer was feeling gassy after lunch. Having admissions winnow down the applications to say 3x the class size and doing the rest by lottery just makes the luck factor explicit.
The idea was students wouldn't go through the rest of their life thinking they'd prevailed in a meritocracy, and had earned and deserved every bit of their future success. They'd always have to acknowledge: some of it was pure luck.