<p>Why do so many ppl say the Mayo Clinic is so an awesome prestigious medical center?</p>
<p>It’s doesn’t even accept Medicare or Medicaid patients… It rejects the poor and those who cannot afford to pay health care insurance. It fails in it’s mission to serve the general populace. Why does it deserve recognition as the #2 hospital in the world? </p>
<p>It doesn’t deserve to be the #2 best hospital in the world if it only acts as a highly specialized medical center that rejects “money losing” reimbursement or lack thereof for those unable to pay out of pocket, medicare, medicaid patients???</p>
<p>Caltech… is an awesome school… but only for engineering, math, and science. I personally believe it’s too highly specialized to be considered a national university (pls a Caltech student… prove me wrong I may be ignorant on this issue)</p>
<p>Now, with those realities in mind, go back and re-read the first post in this thread. What conclusion to YOU draw?</p>
<p>My conclusion is that we have a male applicant (possibly URM) who is likely: bitter, not terribly attached to actual facts, and rejected by his first choice, Caltech.</p>
<p>Make sense. Rejected from a dream school and seems to be a little bitter about it. Sorry that this happen, but moving on is the best thing you can do. You still have a whole life in front of you, going to college is only a small part of it.</p>
<p>Most Caltech applicants are self-selecting, and they know pretty much exactly what it is they’re trying to sign up for. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone supposedly fall in love with Caltech for seemingly all the wrong reasons. Winning at sports? Diversity? The prestige of going to a super-highly-selective school? I’m sorry, but I think you dialed the wrong number. </p>
<p>Caltech does have a very nice water polo pool.</p>
<p>Don’t forget that Caltech is RIGOROUS. (Yeah, I’m sure MIT is too.) But the point being that everyone takes Calc 1 as a Frosh, even if they’ve had multivariate…yet kids still flunk with a real D or F (unlike the Gentlemen’s C+ available at H).</p>
<p>Okay, assuming this is not a clever satire - a complete reversal of the usual CC anti-AA and anti-athlete complaints, I’ll bite:</p>
<p>I’d say it is true: they do in fact admit only students with high grades and tests scores. But how is that cheating? Admitting only the top academic students is the very definition of being selective. You’ve got it exactly backwards here. It’s when schools <em>lower</em> their academic standards that they become less selective, not when they raise them.</p>
<p>Maybe I did not articulate my point clearly enough.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that when judgin the quality and prestigiousness of a university, the college’s selectivity is the most important factor, especially in the USNews rankings. It’s no coincidence that the most prestigious universities, Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc. are also the most selective. The USNews rankings DEFINETELY need to give the non-Caltech colleges a handicap in regards to their selectiveness. If Rice, Emory, UNC, Vandy, and all the other top schools utilized Caltech’s admissions policies of not giving preferential treatment to athletes or URM’s, they would be even MORE selective than Caltech and would be ranked much much higher.</p>
<p>I ahve heard people say so many times “Oh, Caltech is a much better school than UNC (or UVA, Lehigh, etc.) , after all, it is much more selective and the student body is much more qualified.” It annoys me so much when people say that because if other universities used Caltech’s admissions policies, they would be more selective.</p>
<p>It just irritates me when people judge schools by how low their acceptance rates and how high their SAT ranges are I mean, Rice is and has been expanding a lot in the last couple of years, and if it hadn’t, its acceptance rate would be way lower than it is right now (like twenty-four percent). People who keep judging universities by how selective they are would have thought better of Rice and thought it “more prestigious and better” if it hadn’t expanded, but seriously, regardless of whether Rice’s acceptance rate is 25 percent or 14 percent, it is still the same school with the same faculty, campus, etc.</p>
<p>I’m basically against people claiming that Caltech is incredible because it is so selective; however, I do realize that it has many valid reasons for being thought of well, such as small class sizes and good teachers.</p>
<p>“What about now? Caltech remains an interesting case in American higher education. It clearly wants to retain its high academic standards, but it is also trying desperately hard to get on the diversity bandwagon. It has its own Office for Minority Student Education which focuses on “support services and programming for minority students.” It has its own Diversity page, with links to diversity news.” </p>
<p>“Caltech made great efforts to achieve seemingly meager results. Those efforts were of course rooted in the beliefs enunciated in the 2001 “Diversity Statement.” And behind that statement, in turn, lay the sense of embarrassment that the University’s academic excellence existed in a sphere of human endeavor cut off from the great ideological project in higher education of the last quarter-century: getting the racial numbers right.”</p>
<p>Caltech actually supports affirmative action according to this article, but it is so hellbent on keeping its selectivity down. Why? The answer is obvious, because its high selectivity makes it more highly ranked and prestigious.</p>
<p>Have I made myself clear now?</p>
<p>I don’t hate Caltech, and I never applied there. I considered applying there and it was among my top choices for a while, but I later decided that I didn’t want to go somewhere so small and focuses on math science.</p>
<p>putrid wrote: " don’t hate Caltech, and I never applied there. I considered applying there and it was among my top choices for a while, but I later decided that I didn’t want to go somewhere so small and focuses on math science. "</p>
<p>I call BS. If you didn’t end up applying, it is only because you discovered your 2100 SAT would be bottom 1% at Caltech. You wouldn’t have lasted six weeks there.</p>
<p>Of course Caltech thinks diversity is important and its relative lack of ethnic diversity is a problem. What school wouldn’t? However, as of yet it has not compromised its principles by giving URMs special consideration. Thus the more difficult search for URMs who would have been admitted anyway through the regular pool (who will likely be cross-admits to Ivy/MIT).</p>
<p>Selectivity is not necessarily an indicator of quality, or even prestige (cf. Denison University, 38% acceptance rate with median SAT scores ~625). Some people believe otherwise; so what? Why do you care what other people think? </p>
<p>Every single private college or university in the country is entitled to change its admissions policies to mirror Caltech’s. However, they have chosen not to–they prefer to build a class and select specifically for diversity vs. simply the best and brightest.</p>
Caltech doesn’t need to sit on its selectivity to get accolades. </p>
<p>In math, science, and engineering, for example, Caltech blows Rice out of the water. Quality is what matters, not acceptance rate. I highly doubt anyone here thinks the College of the Ozarks (12% admitted) is a better school than Duke or Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Is Ozarks the one that offers free tuition in exchange for work? I’ve always admired Berea for that kind of mission.</p>
<p>My uninformed laywoman’s impression is that while Rice’s math/science/engg departments may be excellent, the HYP-level distinction for that particular specialty goes to MIT and Caltech. Someone else can provide evidence, I’m sure.</p>
I may be ignorant on this issue)</p>