<p>To rytskg, actually I would have to disagree that those borderline students would have the statistics that you suggested. The 25th SAT percentile for Caltech was 1460, hence a full quarter of the entering class had an SAT of 1460 or less. That's a fquite sizable chunk of the entering class, you must agree. Furthermore, 94% of the entering freshmen were in the top 10% of their high school class, which obviously means that 6% were not. I would say that this is also a fairly large chunk.</p>
<p>Now, don't get me wrong, it is obviously true that the SAT doesn't measure everything and high school class rank also doesn't measure everything. No metric is perfect. I am not here to debate the merits of the SAT or class rank. What I am saying is that Caltech could easily go back through its historical data and examine all the students who came in but, for whatever reason, didn't make it, and then perform a statistical analysis on these students to determine if they tend to hold a specific incoming trait above a certain confidence interval. For example, Caltech might find out that of all the students they admit but don't graduate, 95% of them had an SAT score of less than 1400. Or had relatively low (that is, low for Caltech) math test scores and/or grades. Or whatever it might be. Then Caltech should then just admit less of these students. </p>
<p>Some of you might object that you never really know which students aren't going to make it. But that's beside the point. You obviously can never know with a 100% guarantee who is going to make it and who isn't. But statistics can tell you what is probably going to happen. It is similar to auto insurance companies deciding whether they should insure a particular driver - the worse that driver's record is, the less likely that that company will decide to insure him, until a point is reached where the insurance company will absolutely not offer insurance. A guy who has a history of DUI's and who has been in numerous accidents is probably not a good insurance risk. Hence, Caltech can set up a table of confidence intervals and determine, based on historical data, who is highly unlikely to graduate. </p>
<p>Also, I dispute the notion that if Caltech increased its selectivity, it would lose out most of its potential admits to MIT. That might be true if Caltech were currently admitting lots of students who aren't good enough to get into MIT, which I do not see. However, the data does not seem to indicate that Caltech is admitting a significant number of students who aren't good enough to get into MIT. On a head-to-head basis, in terms of admittees, Caltech and MIT are basically even. The other way it might be true is that people who are admitted to Caltech and MIT will tend to prefer (perhaps slightly) MIT over Caltech. If that is true (and I'm not saying that it is), I would argue that might in fact be explained by Caltech's higher rigor, which may serve to turn some people off. Simply put, some people might want the greater guarantee of getting the degree that they will get from MIT rather than put up with the greater risk from Caltech of ending up with nothing. Hence, I would argue that this is really a reversal of cause and effect. </p>
<p>Finally, I don't know whether Caltech's economics has anything to do with anything. Honestly, how much money are we talking about here? Considering Caltech's highly generous financial aid, I think a case could be made that Caltech is actually LOSING money from its undergraduate program. But in any case, if Caltech is in fact making a profit from its undergrad program, it's going to amount to at best a rounding error relative to the rest of the budget. The vast vast majority of Caltech's budget comes from research dollars, from alumni donations, and from interest on its accumulated endowment.</p>
<p>Let me put it to you this way. Caltech's endowment is something on the order of $1.2 billion. If Caltech were to invest this endowment in US Federal bonds, which are generally considered to be the safest financial vehicle in the world, Caltech would earn about $50 million a year just on endowment interest alone. Caltech enrolls about 900 undergrads, of which about 100 will eventually fail to graduate. So if Caltech were to simply not have admitted these 100 students in the first place, then that is basically a loss of about $2.5 million of tuition a year, and that presumes that each and every one of those 100 students received zero financial aid from Caltech, which is obviously ridiculous. And I haven't even begun talking about all the research money that Caltech garners or the additions to the endowment from alumni donations. Or, to quote from Caltech's published 2003 budget, "...As
has been the case historically, sponsored research and gift revenues (including payout
from the endowment) in fiscal year 2003 provided 85 percent of the support for campus activities."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.caltech.edu/at-a-glance/2002-2003CaltechFinancials.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.caltech.edu/at-a-glance/2002-2003CaltechFinancials.pdf</a></p>
<p>The point is that whatever money that Caltech might be losing from admitting fewer students is, at worst, a drop in the bucket, and payback would be in the form of improved morale within the Caltech community. I can tell you firsthand that is extraordinarily gutwrenching to watch people who you know and who you've befriended end up struggling academically and finally end up giving up and dropping out or flunking out. It's like working at a company and watching your friends getting laid off or fired. That's not fun for anybody.</p>
<p>Now to alleya, I would have to say that I agree with those people who say that flunking out and being forced out are basically the same thing, because at the end of the day, a student, for whatever reason, is unable to continue. </p>
<p>Furthermore, you have to seriously look at what is meant by the notion of 'transferring schools'. We have to be careful about our definitions here. There are obviously some students who come to Caltech and who do just fine and could graduate, but decide that they want to transfer out anyway. They are not forced out in any way, they just decide that they would rather be somewhere else, maybe someplace with a major that is more to their liking, or they just don't like Pasadena, or whatever. Every school has these students. I am not talking about these students.</p>
<p>What I am talking about are those students who come to Caltech and then start doing very poorly academically, either because they aren't smart enough, or they aren't motivated enough, or they aren't mature enough, or some combination or the 3. Those are the students that I am talking about. You say that they will simply transfer out somewhere, and my response is "Transfer out to where?". If you're good enough to get into Caltech, then you're almost certainly good enough to get into some other top 15-20 school, and you're probably good enough to have gotten into at least 1 of HYPSM. However, if you come to Caltech and then start getting a bunch of mediocre or less-than-mediocre grades, what do you think your chances are of successfully transferring into HYPSM, or even into some other top 20 school? Low indeed, you must agree. Rightly or wrongly, if you are doing badly at Caltech, then few top schools will want to admit you as a transfer. You shot the moon and you lost big. If you do end up successfully transferring out, it will probably only be to some fairly low-ranked school. In that case, that person would probably have been better off not getting admitted into Caltech in the first place. Case in point - I know one guy who was admitted to Caltech, and also to Stanford and a bunch of the lower Ivies. He chose Caltech, and barely scraped by in his first year, and wanted to transfer out. Stanford didn't want him anymore. The lower Ivies didn't want him. He ended up at UCSB. He tells me now, over and over again, that going to Caltech was probably the worst decision he made in his life, and that he should have taken Stanford when he had the chance. </p>
<p>Now obviously, that story was anecdotal. But it does serve to illustrate a larger point. Caltech is, in some ways, an example of 'shooting the moon'. If you go to Caltech and you do well, then the world is your oyster. But what if you don't do well? In that case, you run the significant risk of greatly hurting yourself, at least, compared to going to some other school where things are safer and you're more likely to graduate. </p>
<p>And finally, as to your last paragraph, we have to be careful about what we mean by 'borderline' cases. I am precisely defining 'borderline' cases as those people who are likely to leave because of poor academic performance. I am surmising that these people are probably those who have borderline academic records, but I agree that it is not necessarily so. But that's not the point. The point is that Caltech should figure out who these people are, whoever they are, and then seriously consider not admitting as many of them. I also don't believe that it really is all that difficult to determine who these people are, at least to some confidence interval. For example, Caltech might run multiple rounds of interviews for the applicants to assess who really is fired up and motivated and who isn't. Caltech might want to call up guidance counselors and teachers (basically, whoever wrote the rec's) to really determine who really has the heart to succeed, and who doesn't. </p>
<p>The point is, I don't think it's that hard for Caltech to find out. Caltech clearly has the budget to do it. If Caltech wants to do it, Caltech could do it. The question is, does Caltech really want to do it? I get the feeling that Caltech feels that not only is this not a real problem, I strongly suspect that Caltech actually seems to like it the way it is - that a lower graduation rate relative to HYPSM proves that Caltech is tougher and more strenuous than those other schools.</p>