Overview
This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to conduct a lottery using the Lottery feature in Finalsite Enrollment. It covers testing the lottery process and accessing the results for viewing or presentation purposes.
Check out our Lottery Settings article to learn how to customize your lottery settings and presentation
Who has access to this?
Types: System Admin and Admin
Permissions: Any
In this Article
Setting up your Tiers
Before running a lottery, you will need to set up tiers.
What are tiers?
Tiers are a collection of saved searches that you use in the lottery to tailor how students are selected.
Example: If your school would like to separate students with siblings enrolled, students with faculty parents, and general admission, your tiers might look like this:
- Tier 1 (saved search): All applicants who have siblings enrolled in the school.
- Tier 2 (saved search): All applicants whose parents work at the school.
- Tier 3 (saved search): All students in an Applicant or Application Complete status.
How to set up your tiers
- Navigate to the Search page (Search & Reports > Search)
- Select the correct term.
- Add your criteria. Start the search with the criteria that the students should be Applicants or Application Complete statuses. (Students must be in either an applicant or application complete status to be eligible for the lottery.)
- Add to the criteria to set the standard for your tier. For example, if you are basing part of the lottery on students with faculty parents, pull in the field that will identify that group. Please note: this, of course, means that you must already have a field set up that can differentiate the group you are looking for.
- Save your Search. Start the name of your search with its tier level followed by a clear identifier. For example: Tier 1 - Faculty Student.
Notes about tiers
- The final tier should be set to the criteria "status is applicant or application complete". This will be a catch-all for all other students that did not meet any of the tier criteria.
- Important: Each year you need to go into the saved searches, update the term to the following year, and update the saved search so that when you run the lottery that year, it's pulling in the correct group of students.
Setting up your Lottery
To run a new lottery, view past lotteries, or present results, navigate to Settings > Lottery > Lottery in your Finalsite Enrollment site.
Click on the Run a Lottery button in the top left to get started. In the dialog box, you will see the following options.
Understanding the Lottery Options
Test Lottery
This allows you to run the lottery in test mode. When checked, the system will perform all steps of the lottery except the final step of changing a student's status. This is useful in testing your lottery tiers or weighting system. Note: Test Lotteries can be deleted after running them.
Apply Year
Here, you can set the apply year of the lottery you'd like to run.
Apply Grade
This allows you to set the apply grade of the lottery you’d like to run.
Lottery Option 1?
Please note
This option only appears if you have enabled the Partition lotteries & waitlists by lottery_option_1? option within the Lottery Settings page.
Lotteries are siloed by 2 criteria: Apply Grade and Apply Year. Lottery option 1? is a partition so you can add a third criterion to your lottery such as campus or gender. The third criterion would be set up as lottery option 1 on the back end of the system, and it would display as a column in the lottery page so that the lottery is now filtered by all 3 criteria.
Accept how many students?
Here, you can set the number of students you’re going to accept for the apply year and grade selected.
Automatically accept siblings?
This allows you to choose how to handle siblings. You can choose from the following options:
- No
- All siblings
- Siblings in the same grade
- Siblings in higher grades
If selecting All siblings or Siblings in the same grade, you have the option to also automatically waitlist same-grade siblings together
Next, you can choose between doing a Tiered Lottery or a Weighted Lottery:
Tiered Lottery
This allows you to select the tiered searches that the lottery will run off of.
Weighted Lottery
With this option, in addition to your tiered searches, Weighted Lottery allows you to set a weight for each tier. The lottery will then create a total weight for each student based on the tiers in which they appear.
Adding Tiered Searches
After selecting whether you'd like to run a tiered or weighted lottery, you'll start pulling in the saved searches you built to guide your tiers.
Is there a limit to how many tiers I can add?
Yes and no. Technically, you'll run into some issues if you try to add more than 30 tiers but it's rather unlikely that you'd need more than that amount to begin with so, have no fear when selecting your tiers.
Tiered Lottery
If you selected to run a Tiered Lottery, open the Select Saved Search dropdown and select your first tiered search. Pro tip: this is where giving it a clear and recognizable name comes in handy.
Once you've selected your first tier, continue to add your additional tiers by selecting the Add Tier? option and pulling in the next level tier from the dropdown of saved searches.
If you select the wrong tier you do have the option to remove it.
Weighted Lottery
If you select to run a Weighted Lottery, you'll set a weight for each tier that you pull in.
Enter the weight into the box above the search dropdown and then choose your saved tier search below. Please note: The weight must be entered as a whole number. This box does not accept decimals.
Running your Lottery
When you run a lottery, students are automatically moved into one of two statuses based on the outcome: Accepted and Waitlisted.
A few important reminders:
- If you have selected Test lottery? no change will be made to the student's status.
- Your Waitlist can also be viewed from the Admissions tab (Admissions > Waitlist).
- Custom columns can be added to the Lottery Results page from the List Page Configuration setup page (Settings > General > List Page Configuration).
About Statuses: Accepted and Waitlisted
Neither of these statuses is visible to parents. Here's what the parents will see for both:
If the parent hasn't completed all of their checklist items:
Parents will see the "Applying for X Grade in [Term]" message and still have access to their checklist.
If the parent has completed all of their required checklist items:
The parent will see the "Application Complete" message and still have access to their checklist.
Once the lottery is finished, click View to see which students were moved to Accepted or Waitlisted status.
Hidden names and/or birthdates
In the Lottery Settings, you can opt to hide student names and/or birthdates.
If you selected to hide the name, the student's name in the Contact column will appear blank on this page until you click the Reveal Student Names button above the list.
Presenting the Results
Presentation mode allows you to display the presentation for parents or in front of your auditors to give a visual demonstration of the lottery.
To view the lottery presentation, select Presentation on your Lottery page.
Schools operating remotely can run this presentation and then share their screen, so that parents and students can watch over Zoom, Google Meet, etc. Please note: The link to the presentation should not be shared with anyone outside of your Finalsite Enrollment users, as it will prompt them to log in to your Admin Portal upon clicking it.
Once the Acceptance Lottery presentation has played, you will be able to start a Waitlist Lottery presentation.
A few closing notes on the Lottery presentation
- By default, the presentation mode will show each student's name, lottery result, and birthdate. Within the Lottery Settings page, you have the option to hide student names (and replace them with a unique Lottery ID for each student) and/or hide student birthdates when presenting your lottery. Please note: in order for an ID to populate, one must be set up. To set this ID value for students, you can either (1) import it into the lottery_id field, (2) update it manually on the student contact record, or (3) have our Support Team set the field to auto-generate.
- Waitlisted students will have their waitlist position number listed. If the lottery was run as a test lottery, this will be indicated on the presentation mode as well. To change how many rows to display, fade-in/fade-out times, or delays on the lottery presentation, go to your Lottery Settings.
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