<p>This is the same guy that said Caltech would be his first choice except for our athletic ability? Now he says we’re not worthy of our ranking? This seems a bit like sour grapes…</p>
Something I noticed, not sure if it has been mentioned here before. On the show Numb3rs, the main character is a professor at a university called the “California Institute of Science” which is clearly Caltech. </p>
<p>The media is always eager to have geniuses come from MIT, why rename Caltech?</p>
So you’re saying this just boils down to affirmative action and whether or not you want it at Caltech. Caltech is unique in the top 10 of the US news rankings as it is (I believe) the only one of them that does not practice affirmative action, special admits, etc.
<p>lol i like how the op said in this thread that he didn’t even apply to caltech while he clearly states in the thread that lizzardfire linked that he is applying to caltech</p>
<p>What evidence do you have that CalTech does not have any special admits?</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that if the son of a man who donated twenty million to Caltech applied there, he would get some sort of admissions edge. It would make sense really, and it would benefit the university.</p>
<p>"In the book, he cites the California Institute of Technology as an example of an elite research university that gives no preference to alumni children… Caltech is known for having incredibly talented students who work hard – and the institute is no slacker in fund raising, without any help from alumni preferences… “The fact is that they raise money based on the excellence of the program,” he said. "
<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/05/admit[/url]”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/05/admit</a>
How’s that?</p>
<p>Does Caltech really need to compete in the how-impressed-is-the-average-person-off-the-street-with-your-diploma game that MIT, Stanford, and the Ivies fight so hard to stay on top in?</p>
<p>Caltech already has a reputation commensurate to its quality amongst those people who matter–scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and of course, employers. I’d hate to see Caltech lower itself to that sort of pretentiousness that so characterizes its peers, and it isn’t likely to raise the school any money.</p>
<p>In my experience (and I’m only one person) most people choose elite schools for the bragging rights, and no the intensity of the curriculum. Caltech’s relative anonymity is actually an asset.</p>
<p>Yeah, well, Caltech does a lot of things that don’t make sense to you.</p>
<p>If you want evidence that Caltech doesn’t have a corrupt admissions process, or “pay-for-play” if you want to use a less loaded word, then you should read Daniel Golden’s “The Price of Admission.” Golden has no association with Caltech and in fact is a Harvard graduate.</p>
<p>“He cites the California Institute of Technology as an example of an elite research university that gives no preference to alumni children.”</p>
<p>What colleges say and what they do is very very different. Penn and all the Ivies and Bowdoin say that applying early decision won’t improve your chances, but it does. </p>
<p>In addition, if this were true, Tech is not the only college to not give legacies an advantage. Rice and MIT don’t (I can show you evidence for Rice if you want too).</p>
<p>“MIT doesn’t consider legacy status in admissions – legacy kids aren’t at an advantage compared to the rest of the pool. So basically, all you admissions poohbahs, I’m giving you until 2029 (2006 plus 5 years – when I’m done with grad school – plus 18) to change the policy. (For Karen, below: A legacy is an applicant whose parent(s) attended the school. Some schools give preference to legacy applicants; MIT doesn’t.)”</p>
<p>In addition, you DO realize that there are VERY few Tech graduates living because Tech’s undergraduate body is so small, which means that there will be remarkably few children of Tech alumni aplying to Tech. It would definetely be a better strategy for Tech to just not give a legacy advantage to the few legacies that apply, and then say that they don’t give legacies an advantage because it ill make the college look good and moral, when really giving legacies some preference in admissions will make practically no difference in the amount of elumni giving money received because there are so ridiculously few legacy kids applying in the first place.</p>
<p>Also, the article said NOTHING about whether Tech gives preference to the children of people who donated millions of dollars to the university. How do you know it doesn’t? There is definetely a solid chance that it does. That was what my original point was, and it has not been refuted or even answered.</p>
<p>Look, you people are going completely off-topic.</p>
<p>My point is that people should should not think that Tech is incredible and prestigious in part because of how low its acceptance rate is and how high it SAT ranges are. It is wrong to perceive Tech as a better school than Georgia Tech partly because its acceptance rates and SAT ranges are higher because if Georgia Tech ran admissions the same way Tech did, its acceptance rate and SAT ranges would be similar. However, many people wrongly think this way. I think we can all agree on that. Tech hoever is a superior school to GT in many regards such as small class sizes and incredible faculty. I don’t hate Tech, I’m just trying to make my points clear, ok?</p>
<p>Oh yeah, also, some people were throwing around some completely wrong statstics. </p>
<p>[Caltech</a> Guide](<a href=“http://www.enotes.com/caltech-guide]Caltech”>http://www.enotes.com/caltech-guide)
Tech’s acceptance rate is 14%, not sixteen percent, and probably has gone down much more during this admissions cycle. Harvard and Yale’s acceptance rates only reached 7-9 percent during this admissions cycle; when Tech’s acceptance rate was 14%, HYP’s acceptance rates were about ten to eleven percent. No school in the US news rankings has a 6 percent acceptance rate I don’t know where someone got that statistics from.</p>
<p>The reason I doubt this is that you said earlier it was insulting to even consider it peer to universities like Harvard and Stanford. That is complete bogus, especially in terms of undergraduate student intelligence. I hardly care about SAT’s – I think it’s a stupid test, but to say Caltech’s policies are ridiculous and then to put it down in face of other schools with what I’d call at least as ridiculous policies leads me to believe you’re just hating on Caltech. </p>
<p>Obviously any system has its flaws, and Caltech’s does too, and pointing these out isn’t bad, but some of what you say doesn’t make sense. </p>
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<p>Obviously. I hardly see any of us arguing against you that SAT’s are the end-all.</p>
<p>If you want to say Caltech is not as prestigious as it’s made out to be because of policies that’re biased against certain types of students, you’d better extend that to every single selective school there is in this country.</p>
<p>I want to say Caltech is not as prestigious as it’s made out to be because its selectivity is inflated by its admissions policies that don’t support aa or athlete preference (accoridng to people who judge how good a school is by its selectivity). Harvard, Yale, Princeton are very impressive because they still have accceptance rates and SAT ranges about equal to Tech yet have much larger student bodies and support aa and athlete preerence.</p>
<p>Tech and Stanford are peer schools in terms of both being very selective and highly ranked, but they couldn’t be any more different. Stanford practices aa, gives lots of legacy preference has d one sports, does not focus on the maths and sciences only, is quite big, has great graduate programs. Tech is the opposite Tech and Stanford are ridiculously different institutions.</p>
<p>If this is so clear to you, which it also is to me, where’s the logic in criticizing Caltech for not doing AA and supporting athletics? Caltech’s goal in admissions is different. Stanford athletics is kind of a big deal. Caltech’s goal is to educate top-notch mathematical/scientific minds.</p>
<p>The only criticism you could possibly legitimately hold against Caltech is if you believe it admits ridiculously many “high-SAT, high-GPA” applicants while rejecting applicants which are comparably much more mathematically/scientifically able. I’m sure it’s made this mistake a few times, but as every school makes mistakes, I’d only criticize it if you think this is happening on a large scale. And you’d have to have evidence to support that too many math/science/engineering stars are being rejected for people with 20 points higher on the SAT. </p>
<p>Else, really Caltech’s AA and athletics-free admissions could be exactly what they want to do for a reason, which is that the main thing they value is commitment to technical excellence.</p>
<p>theendusputrid, until you gain a rudimentary understanding of how Caltech admissions works, kindly take your ignorant comments elsewhere. You continue to make generalizations and false assumptions about how Caltech admissions decisions are made, and ignore anyone who attempts to point these out to you. </p>
<p>For example, you wrote: “It only admits people with high SAT scores and gpa’s (math and science related ec’s are very secondary), admit it it’s true.”</p>
<p>This is blatantly false. Math and science ECs are HUGELY important to Caltech admissions, since they show passion for math and science which is essential. SAT scores and GPAs are only important insofar as they give a (albeit somewhat flawed) measure of a person’s ability to succeed through Caltech’s rigorous core curriculum.</p>
<p>I could go on, but others already have and you ignored them as I’m sure you’ll ignore me. But in all seriousness, please go away. You’re making a fool of yourself.</p>
<p>OK, I don’t like most of what this OP is saying, and I’ve been arguing against him/her consistently, but I think you’re dismissing the one valid point the OP <em>MAY</em> have. I have seen in the school that I go to that students who had very high GPA’s and SAT’s tended to be favored over those with true ability in the given subject area in several instances. I’m not sure that this does <em>not</em> happen in Caltech. Neither am I going to claim that it does on any large scale.</p>
<p>I’m hugely confident that math/science passion is important, but I don’t think what you’re stating to be “blatantly false” is truly blatantly false. I have seen some Caltech admits that aren’t even close to the Caltech type at all in spirit (i.e. I could say I’ve seen more math/science passion elsewhere), but had very good grades and scores, including in math and science, but nothing particularly special in math and science. I’m willing to dismiss these as mistakes, and not generalize, but I’d not dismiss everything the OP says just because a lot of it doesn’t make sense. My 2 cents.</p>
<p>RE: mathboy98, you go to a fairly large public school that by necessity has to make decisions more quickly with less data per student. Caltech is willing to seriously consider someone even if they have abysmal SAT Scores (ie, they don’t need to do a filter with SAT scores). I know someone at Tech whose verbal score was so low that he got rejected by even UC-Davis.</p>
<p>OTOH, I do agree you occasionally might see Caltech admits who are not truly passionate about math/science. They usually end up not choosing to go to Caltech, though.</p>
(For Karen, below: A legacy is an applicant whose parent(s) attended the school. Some schools give preference to legacy applicants; MIT doesn’t.)”</p>