Feature-based Uncertainty Model for School Choice
Fuente:
arXiv
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| Autores principales: | , |
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| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866917272439750656 |
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| author | Zhang, Yao Yokoo, Makoto |
| author_facet | Zhang, Yao Yokoo, Makoto |
| contents | In this work, we consider a school choice scenario where a student does not exactly know which college is better for her. Although it is hard for a student to obtain an exact preference, she can usually compare specific features of colleges, such as reputation, location, and campus facilities. Motivated by this, we propose a feature-based uncertainty model for school choice where a student's preference is based on a linear combination of her utilities over different features, and the coefficients of the combination are treated as random variables. Our main goal is to achieve a higher probability of stability (ProS) and incentive compatibility (IC) for students. Unfortunately, these two goals are incompatible in general. We show that a student-proposing deferred acceptance (DA) that prioritizes colleges with higher expected ranking can achieve a worst-case approximation ratio of $(1/n)^n$ on ProS, while a DA with a carefully defined iterated comparison vector can guarantee the strongest achievable form of IC. Finally, we provide additional results for some specific restrictions on the model. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_12615 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Feature-based Uncertainty Model for School Choice Zhang, Yao Yokoo, Makoto Computer Science and Game Theory In this work, we consider a school choice scenario where a student does not exactly know which college is better for her. Although it is hard for a student to obtain an exact preference, she can usually compare specific features of colleges, such as reputation, location, and campus facilities. Motivated by this, we propose a feature-based uncertainty model for school choice where a student's preference is based on a linear combination of her utilities over different features, and the coefficients of the combination are treated as random variables. Our main goal is to achieve a higher probability of stability (ProS) and incentive compatibility (IC) for students. Unfortunately, these two goals are incompatible in general. We show that a student-proposing deferred acceptance (DA) that prioritizes colleges with higher expected ranking can achieve a worst-case approximation ratio of $(1/n)^n$ on ProS, while a DA with a carefully defined iterated comparison vector can guarantee the strongest achievable form of IC. Finally, we provide additional results for some specific restrictions on the model. |
| title | Feature-based Uncertainty Model for School Choice |
| topic | Computer Science and Game Theory |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12615 |