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Kalshi Moves to Launch Wagers on College Admissions Katherine Knott Fri, 10/23/2026 - 03:00 AM Byline(s) Katherine Knott
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Certain employees of the universities won’t be able to bet on their institutions’ admission rate.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
One of the country’s leading prediction markets is planning to get into the business of college admissions.
Kalshi could soon add what it calls “event contracts” regarding admission rates at 22 selective institutions, including Johns Hopkins University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago, according to notices filed this week with its federal regulator. Users will be able to wager whether a college’s admission rate will be less than, equal to or greater than a certain value, such as 10 percent. Kalshi plans to verify admission rates for first-time, first-year undergraduates using the Common Data Set.
“College admission rates matter economically because they sit at the point where education, labor markets and household finances meet,” a Kalshi spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed.
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Kalshi plans to allow bets for admissions rates at the following universities: Brown University; the California Institute of Technology; Carnegie Mellon University; Columbia University; Cornell University; Dartmouth College; Duke University; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Northwestern University; Princeton University; Rice University; Stanford University; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Chicago; the University of Notre Dame; the University of Pennsylvania; Vanderbilt University; Washington University in St. Louis; and Yale University.
Employees and others in the admission and financial aid offices of the universities won’t be able to wager on their university’s rates. Others barred from trading include employees in the university’s communications office and other departments who might have advance knowledge of the rate.
“Employees and contractors of any application platform or vendor that hosts, operates, or processes data for UCLA’s first-year applications or admissions records” also can’t trade, according to the notice for the UCLA contract. Kalshi has recently penalized several users because of insider trading, including former Rep. George Santos, who was barred and fined nearly $72,000.
AdvertisementKalshi has yet to launch the admissions rate contracts, though the platform allows users to gamble on other higher ed issues, such as whether Harvard University will prevail in its lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s funding freezes or whether President Trump will abolish the Education Department.
Prediction markets, including Kalshi, have also sought to expand their footprint in higher ed, but they’ve faced criticism for how they have done so.
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