Getting a lottery number is no small feat, as it’s a 32-digit code that’s supposed to tell you where you fit in the admissions process. It’s also used for tiebreakers in competitive funding applications. In the spring of 2022, every student in the New York City public school system will receive a computer-generated lottery number.
This code is a surprisingly complicated piece of machinery. It’s designed to generate numbers from a Registrar’s Office database of student interest forms. Each student will receive their number at the beginning of the spring term. They will receive instructions on how to view their number via an email account. A $300 fee is required for this service.
A similar scheme is used to generate lottery numbers for the housing lottery, which will be sent out in the early part of March. These numbers will be posted on the Housing Portal. They will be unique within a range of the number of current residents. The numbers are also graded in a number of ways.
The first eight characters of the lottery number are used as tie breakers. These characters offer more than four billion possible combinations. The lucky number is the shortest of these.
The Department of Education (DOE) released the lottery number in response to parental requests and demands for greater transparency. It didn’t, however, offer a lot of information about the process. Some lottery number requestors received a detailed explanation of how the numbers are generated, while others only received the lottery number itself.