<p>Caltech does not admit on pure credentials. Where do you get your info? There is a lot of cross-admits with MIT, along with SCS at Carnegie Mellon. </p>
<p>“I personally would make the trek (to the supermarket across town) only if the supermarket far away is better than the one close home. What would you do?”</p>
<p>The supermarket analogy doesn’t work because the supermarkets themselves are, for all intents and purposes, identical in their offerings.</p>
<p>Other people can, of course, counsel their kids how they wish to. All I can tell you is that we urged my kids to look at other parts of the country other than our own backyard, we put our money where our mouth was to travel to those places and look at schools, and I continue to think that the one <em>downside</em> of the school one of my kids attended is that it’s in our area and hasn’t been able to experience another part of the country.</p>
<p>I just think it’s broadening, the same way traveling internationally is broadening. It doesn’t “hurt” anyone if they don’t ever get to travel to Europe, but it provides a different set of experiences than if you just vacation in your backyard.</p>
<p>“What I meant this: if two kids, one from Roxbury Latin and one from a S/MW magnet school that has never placed a kid in Harvard show up with the exact same credentials and recommendations, the one from Rox is likely getting preference. That’s how all human beings work (including you, I believe, so please correct me if I am wrong).”</p>
<p>Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on a lot of other factors. Maybe they don’t need kid #18 from Roxbury that year and want to cleanse the palate.</p>
<p>FWIW, my one kid who attends an elite northeast LAC was the first student ever from this high school to apply (and obviously be accepted). </p>
<p>“Do you think MIT should recruit purely based on credentials like Caltech does? What would the racial distribution be at MIT then? Will there be any sizable URM representation? And will you be OK with that?”</p>
<p>The racial distribution of MIT might very well change and perhaps there might not be a critical mass of URM’s. For all I know, maybe there will be a very lopsided male / female skew. To the extent that’s a “problem,” that’s MIT’s problem; it’s not my problem to have. They can define the mission and what they’re willing to obtain and give up, and the marketplace will decide whether their “product” is worth buying. </p>
<p>bookworm, I never said MIT or Caltech admitted on credentials only. I was simply suggesting that I would think a tech school might be fairly able to confidently use scores/curriculum/etc. to admit a student from a school they were unfamiliar with.</p>
<p>“I would trust my instincts. And two people cannot be identical anyway, so it’s a silly question. There are other reasons to give the nod to someone who was recommended to me, though. They would have more to do with my relationship with the recommender, though. There are benefits to building and using networks, obviously.”</p>
<p>In other words, you acknowledge the value of networking in your professional life, but you are not happy when private schools leverage their neworks in elite colleges to advance their students. I find that … interesting.</p>
<p>“The racial distribution of MIT might very well change and perhaps there might not be a critical mass of URM’s. For all I know, maybe there will be a very lopsided male / female skew. To the extent that’s a “problem,” that’s MIT’s problem; it’s not my problem to have. They can define the mission and what they’re willing to obtain and give up, and the marketplace will decide whether their “product” is worth buying.”</p>
<p>To the extent the Ivies has a “problem” with their geographical distribution, it is their problem as well, and not your’s. Yet you spent considerable time on it, analyzing data, and claiming that the hypothetical best situation is proportional representation (within a tight variance range) by states. </p>
<p>Yet, you do not care if the racial distribution of a college changes in favor of the majority, as does the gender distribution in favor of males.</p>
<p>I find your priorities … interesting.</p>
<p>“Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on a lot of other factors. Maybe they don’t need kid #18 from Roxbury that year and want to cleanse the palate.”</p>
<p>This I agree with.</p>
<p>“FWIW, my one kid who attends an elite northeast LAC was the first student ever from this high school to apply (and obviously be accepted).”</p>
<p>Perhaps she was an elite candidate, or perhaps she got in on a region quota. Your choice in what you want to believe. I would err on the side of her being an elite candidate.</p>
<p>“The supermarket analogy doesn’t work because the supermarkets themselves are, for all intents and purposes, identical in their offerings.”</p>
<p>Substitute supermarkets for restaurants then. Now tell me if you would drive out of the way to always eat at the far off restaurant, which has the same overall rating as the one next to home. Of course, sometimes you will do that for variety (that’s what exchange student programs are for when it comes to college). But will you always do that?</p>
<p>Of course, you will do that if the restaurant that is far away has better ratings. But you believe that the NE elites are in no way better than the S/MW state schools, right?</p>
<p>“Other people can, of course, counsel their kids how they wish to. All I can tell you is that we urged my kids to look at other parts of the country other than our own backyard, we put our money where our mouth was to travel to those places and look at schools, and I continue to think that the one <em>downside</em> of the school one of my kids attended is that it’s in our area and hasn’t been able to experience another part of the country.”</p>
<p>Perhaps you are in a SES that can afford it. Should you really extrapolate your experience to all parents? I mean, it is fun to ask everyone to eat cake, but it is not very sophisticated thinking in my mind. Let’s think about a regular American family here who barely has college funds.</p>
<p>“I just think it’s broadening, the same way traveling internationally is broadening. It doesn’t “hurt” anyone if they don’t ever get to travel to Europe, but it provides a different set of experiences than if you just vacation in your backyard.”</p>
<p>There is a difference between taking a vacation and relocating for 4 years, so that analogy doesn’t hold. I am all for exchange student programs, of course. </p>
<p>But then, people do relocate to countries that they find offer better prospects than their own. That however can’t apply to the Ivies, right, as they offer no better quality of education than the state universities in the S and the MW? So why the rush for folks from the S and the MW to go to college in the NE, if the options are just as good close to home?</p>
<p>Or are the options close to home not really at par with the NE elites after all? I wonder …</p>
<p>“We are not talking about racial or socioeconomic diversity here. And MIT can do whatever it wants as long as it is legal and fits within its mission.”</p>
<p>But how would you feel if MIT went straight to the test scores and in turn crushed URM admissions, and likely female admissions too? After all, you are advocating that MIT shoud just go with the test scores, right?</p>
<p>“Caltech does not admit on pure credentials. Where do you get your info? There is a lot of cross-admits with MIT, along with SCS at Carnegie Mellon.”</p>
<p>Caltech is completely race and gender neutral in deciding who gets in and who stays out. </p>
<p>Catalan:</p>
<p>As interested parents, I think we all value the experience, perspectives and insights that others on CC can share about college admissions. I think they are especially valuable for a parent of a first time college applicant. This is the Parents Forum, after all? We all don’t know what we don’t know, right? It’s why many of us have come to CC. To that end, the free flow of opinions here and on other threads is appreciated. </p>
<p>Thank you for stating your opinion so passionately. We get it. But there really is no need to “win” the argument, “be right” about the data/analysis presented, or attack anyone’s intelligence or integrity. You have stated your point of view clearly in numerous posts. Again, we get it. </p>
<p>Perhaps you know everything there is to know – for your own situation, but how about letting others state their views, without putting them on the defensive, and allowing the rest of us to evaluate, weigh, agree with, or disagree with the views presented. Threads like this one can be a good source of information from informed parents all over the country, to enable all of us to look beyond our own backyards or circles, in helping our kids and families make the best decisions for ourselves. </p>
<p>In the end, it’s all information from well meaning parents who have tried their best in making decisions for their own kids and families. Whether we agree or not with the views presented, it’s good to get information from experienced parents with the best motivation – trying to do what’s best for their kids and families. Is there really such a need to “win” or be “right” to the point of driving posters off this thread or having the moderator weigh in about closing this thread? </p>
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<p>since you seem rather strong in Stats, you must know that such can’t possibly be true. Caltech’s own CDS shows a high admission advantage for xx chromosomes. (Unless you want to assume that Caltech has some secret sauce which naturally attracts a significant portion of the females who score 780+.)</p>
<p>Well, I for one, give up trying to suggest something new to Catalan#s. I figured that I knew a lot about Caltech and MIT having read their newspapers for a decade, their threads on CC, attended Parents Weekends, met some professors. One female prof at Caltech has become a friend over the past 9 years. (We met when I was working in the area and saw each other daily.)</p>
<p>Sally, sorry, I misinterpreted your former comment. </p>
<p>Catalan, 555State is correct. Most of us here keep in mind the fact that for every person who posts on this site, there are many more who don’t but who use the conversations to develop their thinking about the huge decision that is college selection. The collective wisdom here is tremendous. You aren’t a parent or someone who seems interested in helping students (as xiggi has done with his SAT test strategies, for instance). And it is exhausting trying to keep up with your interrogation on this thread. </p>
<p>@xiggi Sorry I lost my temper earlier in the thread. I was tired and regret saying what I did. I like to read your opinions, actually, and find them very useful. My youngest daughter used your SAT method and scored in the upper 700s on her SATs, partially thanks to that. Take care.</p>
<p>“For all the supposed johnny-come-lately status of WashU, it’s notable that they achieve a more national student body than ANY Ivy.”</p>
<p>“This result is not surprising considering the fact the WashU is almost adjacent to the mean center of the United States population (currently located at Laclede County, Missouri).”</p>
<p>“If one looks at the vector from Laclede County, Missouri to the location of a particular school and compares it to the vector from Laclede County to the mean center of population from the four regions then the results from post #1 can be predicted in most cases.”</p>
<p>“In other words if one looks at how distant a particular university is from Laclede County, Missouri then one can predict how high the in index is (this would be the magnitude of the vector). If one made a graph of the distance (x axis) vs. the index (y Axis) there would appear to be a strong correlation.” </p>
<p>This appears to be the case. If you do a linear regression analysis for the following schools (Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Chicago, WashU, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Rice, Stanford, USC ) one finds that the slope of the distance vs. index value is statistically significant (p value <.05). In other words it appears that the index value strongly correlates to the distance from the mean population center of the US. This results is not surprising since most of the posters agree that all things being equal a student would prefer to go to a college that is close to home.</p>
<p>@Swimkidsdad: Thank you for jumping in finally at post #776 and supporting a point of view made in post #79 <em>statistically</em>! I wish CC had the capability to let you share the output of your linear aggression analysis. Good job!</p>
<p>I think you mean linear regression, not aggression 
</p>
<p>Oops! That’s embarrassing. You wouldn’t believe how often I hear that term being thrown around at work yet I still got it wrong!</p>