Enrollment & Lottery
You Cannot Game the SFUSD Lottery — List Your True Preferences
Put your real first choice first. The algorithm rewards honesty.
Why this comes up
Many parents believe they need to game the system — ranking "safe" schools above preferred ones. This fact explains why that instinct backfires and can only hurt your outcome.
What it means for SFUSD
The Gale-Shapley mechanism SFUSD uses is mathematically strategy-proof: any school ranked higher than your assignment is full of students with higher priority than you. Honest ranking is the only optimal strategy.
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