Kalshi files markets on admission odds at 22 selective colleges

Kalshi has filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to list event contracts on first-year admission rates and applicant totals at 22 selective US colleges, including all eight Ivy League schools, MIT, Stanford and UCLA. The markets had not launched when they were reported last week, but Kalshi said it hoped to make them available in the coming months, before regular-decision acceptances are released in spring 2027.

The proposed roster comprises Brown, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, Princeton, Rice, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, the University of Chicago, Notre Dame, Penn, Vanderbilt, Washington University in St. Louis and Yale. Traders could take positions on whether an institution’s rate or applicant total falls above, below, at, or within specified thresholds.

Kalshi filed separate notices for each college and self-certified the contracts with the CFTC on Oct. 19 and 20. A UCLA notification submitted on Oct. 20 specified an initial listing after the close of business that day, while a Duke filing was self-certified under CFTC Regulation 40.2(a). Self-certification allows a contract to be listed one day after notice to the regulator, although Kalshi’s spokesperson said the new markets would take several weeks to clear the process.

Settlement would rely solely on Item C1 of each school’s Common Data Set, rather than university announcements, class profiles, press releases or news reports. The UCLA filing defines its underlying as the first-time, first-year applicant number or admission rate first published in the university’s Common Data Set. Its rate is calculated from unrounded admissions and application totals, then rounded to one decimal place.

That means an early public admission figure would not necessarily decide a contract. A Duke example says that a university announcement of a 4.3% rate would be superseded by a later Common Data Set figure of 4.6%. The markets would cover aggregate results, rather than specific early-action or early-decision outcomes. The figures can include regular-decision, early-decision and special-program applications such as QuestBridge, while excluding transfer and graduate applications.

The filings set a $1 notional value and a one-cent minimum price movement. Duke’s notice set a $25,000 position-accountability limit for each strike per member.

The rules seek to exclude people with access to nonpublic admissions information. Duke’s filing barred admissions officers, application readers, relevant financial-support, provost’s-office and institutional-research staff, communications employees with advance access to the data, as well as the families and households of specified people. UCLA’s notice also excluded employees and contractors of application platforms or vendors that process its first-year applications. Kalshi requires users to be at least 18.

As covered in July, Kalshi’s biopharma prediction-market pilot likewise used restrictions aimed at people with privileged information and settlement against named public documents. The exchange has previously penalized insider trading, including a lifetime ban and a fine of about $71,000 for former Representative George Santos.

The proposal has drawn criticism from higher-education figures. Angel B. Pérez called it “absurd” and said it would intensify the anxiety felt by young people navigating admissions. Arun Ponnusamy said the potential impact on applicants was more troubling than the prospect of insider trading by admissions officers.

Abraham Wyner said every new betting market carries some insider-trading risk, though he argued that scrutiny of relatively small markets would make substantial illicit profits difficult. He nevertheless characterized the idea as part of the “gamification of America” and “just ridiculous.”

Kalshi says admission rates matter because they sit at the intersection of education, labor markets and household finances. It already offers other higher-education-related contracts, including a market on Harvard’s litigation over federal funding freezes, while Polymarket does not offer university-admissions bets.

For UCLA’s 2027 admissions season, the contract would cover applications submitted around October and November, decisions issued around March, and students entering in fall 2027. Settlement would wait for the first Common Data Set published for the 2027-28 academic year.