Perhaps one way to avoid the pain & embarrassment of rejection would be to set up a system similar to the one used by hospitals for accepting medical students into residency programs. Every student lists her choices, ranking them in order of preference (only listing those programs she is willing to attend). Every residency program lists the students it would like to accept, again ranked by order of preference. All of the lists (which are of course kept private) are entered into a computer program, which weighs the lists (giving slight preference to residency program preference over those of individual students) & assigns each student to a program. That way no student is accepted into two programs, which would put lower-ranked students at an extreme disadvantage.
One essential part of the ranking system is “scramble day”, which takes place after students have been assigned to programs but before the assignments are announced. On scramble day, any students who haven’t matched to a program are informed of their status & meet with the dean of their school, who then calls the directors of residency programs with unfilled slots. The dean then tried to place as many students as possible in these unfilled slots. Many medical schools will have very few students who need to be placed this way, & nearly all students are placed by the end of scramble day. Only after scramble day are residency program lists officially announced. Generally the fact that a student didn’t get placed until scramble day isn’t publicized unless the student shares that information herself.
Perhaps a similar system would help avoid the pain & embarrasment caused to hundreds of girls & their families. The most important elements in my opinion is an algorithm that avoids double acceptance, since any time a girl is accepted into two schools, one girl is not accepted into any school. Also, some type of “scramble day” procedure for those who are not initially accepted into any school is important so that no one needs to know who wasn’t placed initially.
This may sound very complicated & unnecessary technological overkill. But I personally think that technological overkill is preferable to causing pain & embarrassment to hundreds of young teenagers & their families.