caltech's admissions policies are ridiculous

Colleges and Universities A-Z California Institute of Technology
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<p>Guys, I’m sorry to break it to you, but this guy’s right, Caltech does too much to nurture its ranking on things like USNWR. To prove it, a while back, I wrote my own college ranking system, filtering out all the possible sources of bias (SAT scores, minority population, alumni giving, acceptance rate, and so on). Shockingly, Caltech plummeted to a lowly #699.</p>

<p>Not so great now, are you Caltech?! Huh!?! HUH!?!?</p>

<p>You saw it here first, guys (unless you saw it when I posted it on facebook a while back, in which case you saw it here second–which is still impressive! bravo!). The proof is here: [NwahRank</a> – College Rankings](<a href=“http://www.its.caltech.edu/~nwatson/ranks.html]NwahRank”>http://www.its.caltech.edu/~nwatson/ranks.html)</p>

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<p>^LOVE YOU. And your code.</p>

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<p>I agree with your statements, quell, but these rankings make no sense.</p>

<p>Its methodology is </p>

<p>import java.util.*;</p>

<p>public class NwahRank
{
public static void main(String args) throws Throwable
{
Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in);
ArrayList<string> colleges = new ArrayList<string>();
while(in.hasNext())
colleges.add(in.nextLine());
in.close();
Collections.shuffle(colleges);
for(int i = 0; i < colleges.size(); i++)
System.out.printf("%d) %s
", i+1, colleges.get(i));
System.exit(0);</string></string></p>

<p>In addition, Tech is ranked far above Harvard, and northwesetern is a lowly 606.</p>

<p>What gives, is this some sort of joke?</p>

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<p>Wait, what? You come under fire for having nonstandard views of college rankings, I toss in my support to you, and you repay me by calling the fruits of my labor “some sort of joke”?</p>

<p>Crushing, sir. To my spirit, your words are crushing.</p>

25

<p>OP said some stupid stuff, but there is a point mixed in there somewhere. Some people use SAT stats not to judge how qualified the student body is (this is clearly the real value), but instead to determine how difficult it is for them to get in. It is human nature to perceive something difficult to obtain as valuable. They would assume Caltech is harder to get into than MIT. But the truth is, for the average (highly intelligent and nerdy) white/Asian guy, this probably isn’t the case.</p>

<p>Clearly, Caltech isn’t trying to nefariously attract this crowd and their policies are purely determined by their admissions philosophy (which I personally disagree with, but definitely respect the institution for standing behind its principles) .</p>

<p>

Keep those upstarts in their place!</p>

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<p>theendusputris,</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>I know nothing about coding, but I’m pretty sure this creates a random list.
:)</p>

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</p>

<p>whoooooooosh</p>

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<p>I really wish I applied here…</p>

<p>I just didn’t think I’d be able to get through the essays. Bah. Well, maybe it’s better, since it would have only been to see if I’d get in, and I hate people who do that, so yay for avoiding hypocrisy!</p>

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<p>Talk about a narrow mathematical focus…</p>

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</p>

<p>Hey, I know someone that goes there!</p>

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<p>Great stuff Quello. You rock!</p>

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<p>Oh dude, we played a soccer game against Soka University of America this year.</p>

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<p>This thread turned into one of my favorites of all time on CC.</p>

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<p>“You are so wrong on so many levels, it’s sickening. No, actually, it’s comical. I totally lol’ed.”</p>

<p>No I’m not.</p>

<p>“You don’t know the first thing about Caltech. I’m surprised you even had the meager brain capacity necessary to find and type the letters out on your keyboard to spell Caltech correctly.” </p>

<p>You are so witty. At least I have the brain capacity to know when I should use quotation marks (you should have put question marks around “Caltech”). </p>

<p>“I can’t even imagine the misguided and delusional world you must live in to think that we admit people to increase our ranking (??), given our history and culture of admitting the smartest high school students in math and science and giving them one of the most rigorous educations in math, science, and engineering in the world.”</p>

<p>You, my friend, are delusional if you think Caltech doesn’t care about its ranking. Every top school does. The fact that Caltech is ranked among the top 6 US universities in the
USnews rankings greatly enhances it prestige and attracts many applicants.</p>

<p>“Caltech’s mission is to educate and produce scientists, not to have it’s teams appear on Sportscenter, or admit through affirmative action people who are not smart enough to do the work (and would end up failing out).” </p>

<p>Hmm, if Caltech offers such a rigorous education, why have you not learned to read? Or at least read carefully.</p>

<p>[NAS</a> - The National Association of Scholars :: Articles Caltech Competes 04/14/2009 Peter Wood](<a href=“http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=700]NAS”>http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=700) Read the adticle. It clearly states that Caltech admissions folk recognize that the fact that Tech has so few minorities is a serious problem, but that Tech is not doing much about it because it wants to remain very selective.</p>

<p>"Caltech is about intelligence, something you sadly lack. </p>

<p>Does a mod or someone want to regulate on this piece of garbage?"</p>

<p>Garbage? You mean like your soccer team with a .075 winning percentage?</p>

<p>"I don’t think a thread with an OP spewing ridiculous accusations and false assumptions and responses laughing at this poor moron has any merit or place on this board. "</p>

<p>Excuse me. You were the one who turned this into an infantile name-calling insult-fest. I was just going along with a little civilize debate, but then you with brgan immaturely and wildly attempting to counter my points with zero evidence to support your claims.</p>

<p>Look, I was just trying to have some civilized debate but if some little anonymous nerd is going to coss the line and call me stupid and insult me, I’m not just going to let him walk all over me.</p>

34

<p>Look, here’s the truth. Caltech knows that it needs to practice affirmative action to get more minorities in the school (like literally EVERY other top school in America). The article I posted a link to proves it.</p>

<p>However, Tech cares too much about keeping its SAT scores and acceptance rate down (to help maintain its high ranking in the USNews report) to do this.</p>

<p>Many people thinks Tech is so prestigious and incredible because it is so “selective,” but if other top schools like Emory and Vanderbilt had admissions systems like Tech, they would appear far more selective than Tech.</p>

<p>If you think I’m wrong, show some evidence like I did instead of making non-factually supported claims.</p>

<p>Look, I think Tech is a nice school with a pretty campus, but it has its problems, and I was just wondering what people thought about the issues I raised actually.</p>

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<p>

Just a little question, how do Caltech’s policies lower its acceptance rate? Really, think about it. It has a number of spots and applicants, it lets in (enough people to fill the class)/(yield). In fact, yield would probably rise if Caltech started letting in less qualified students, lower the acceptance rate further.</p>

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<p>Look, Tech’s sat range is like 2170 to 2370 or something like that; it’s on the tech website. That is higher than Harvard’s, Yale’s, MIT’s, etc.</p>

<p>It’s not a coincidence that all the top schools like Yale, Harvard, MIT have high SAT ranges and are selective; to be considered a prestigious school, you need to be like that.</p>

<p>However, Tech practices no aa to maintain its selectivity at the expense of not hacing diversity.</p>

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<p>And what the hell does that have to do with acceptance rate?</p>

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<p>The fact that Tech inflates his SAT scores and tries to make itself appear as selective as possible attracts more applicants, lowering its acceptance rate and makng it appear more selective, which boosts its USNews ranking.</p>

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<p>“However, Tech cares too much about keeping its SAT scores and acceptance rate down (to help maintain its high ranking in the USNews report) to do this.”</p>

<p>“The fact that Tech inflates his SAT scores and tries to make itself appear as selective as possible attracts more applicants, lowering its acceptance rate and makng it appear more selective, which boosts its USNews ranking.”</p>

<p>Here’s the thing. Your facts are actually wrong, and I thought I proved this to you. Caltech’s acceptance rate is significantly higher than most top tier colleges. Last year it was about 17% and this year 15% before waitlist admits but if they accept any off the waitlist then its likely to go up to 16%. So lets look at the facts. Caltech had twice the acceptance rate of Stanford and more than twice that of Harvard this year. Last year it had 10% higher acceptance rate than Harvard. What do these facts tell us? Well the obvious is that no, they are not ranked so high because of their acceptance rate because that acceptance rate is significantly higher than their peer schools. More facts: their acceptance rate just recently dropped even that low. For the 03-04 school year, the acceptance rate was 21.4%, and trust me, Caltech was ranked just as highly if not higher when it had this oh so not selective acceptance rate. Furthermore, this year they had a record number of applications and that number just barely broke 4000 and not even four years ago, they were still under 3000 applications. Compare that again to its peer schools some of which get 25-30k applications. </p>

<p>This is what we have for facts. What you are saying are assumptions as to what Caltech cares about as if you are dean of admissions (which I’m quite certain you’re not). Now lets infer as to why these numbers are the way they are. Its quite well known that Caltech only picks the best students in the sciences to train to become future scientists. It is also quite highly known that schools like Harvard and Yale and Stanford pick students for “great life stories”, athletics, or other reasons for preferential treatment. So what does this mean? It means that you don’t apply to Caltech unless you are passionate about and extremely good at math and science. It also means that you apply to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. even if you are sub par academically because you play soccer or are first seat trumpet or some other thing that you think can give you an edge because of this “preferential treatment.” So then obviously, and the numbers prove this, the second strategy gets you way more applications. Now having way more applications in no way increases the number of spots open, so acceptance rates decrease in the latter case but do not in Caltech’s when students who are sub par do not apply. Now you tell me does Caltech’s admissions strategy actually lower acceptance rates to make it look more selective, or is it about accepting the most qualified students to create the most qualified class of science students instead of giving “preferential treatment” to less qualified students (something you said would be more desirable…).</p>

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<p>Yeah, I tried to explain this before to the OP…</p>