<p>"it’s picking the students who don’t fit the college, or who don’t think they fit the college, so Caltech has to settle for “MIT and Stanford’s left overs.”</p>
<p>My two cents and pure speculation – Caltech is not actually trying to admit students who are likely to choose it. They just don’t give a damn. They’re enrolling a brilliant class, and they’re fine. This is my impression largely because of their (relative) lack of effort to achieve gender balance. Both men and women say no to Caltech because of the gender imbalance, which in my secondhand observation contributes to a pretty weird social dynamic, even compared to MIT. Caltech could fix this pretty easily by admitting women whose scores aren’t quite so stratospheric. But they refuse to do it. I think they believe this all comes out in the wash and the right students end up at Caltech. The grad rate, to them, reflects not admissions errors but a curriculum deliberately designed to be overwhelming. If they had a 99% grad rate, they’d conclude that they needed to crank up the pressure a notch.</p>
<p>…even for pure speculation, I’d have to agree with your whole post.</p>
<p>But they are working on the gender imbalance. The current enrollment for undergrads is:</p>
<p>Male, 60%
Female 40%</p>
<p>Grad is still highly imbalanced:</p>
<p>Male, 71%
Female, 29%</p>
<p>I would think a lot of the increase in undergrad “coed” enrollment is part of the national trend, with many colleges and universities enrolling as much as 55% female now.</p>
<p>I’d thought this for a long time. But given that Caltech is often placed among peers that perform noticeably better in many ways, I can’t imagine Caltech wouldn’t try to fix its problems. So I conclude that Caltech is just in the process of fixing them; but they’re currently still pretty big problems for the institute.</p>
<p>Of course, it’s all speculation; for all I know, Caltech really doesn’t give a damn.</p>
<p>I believe that they do care, it’s just that yield is a secondary priority. First cutoff is test scores of 700+, even for VR & W. (Perhaps they require that high a score so they don’t have to teach it?) From that pool, they then recruit and have to compete with HYPSM, and all that HYPSM has to offer which Caltech does not. Caltech used to offer merit money – a full ride – to matriculating Frosh as an inducement to turn down the competition, but recently they dropped that program. Obviously, Caltech decided to spend their money elsewhere and risk a lower yield.</p>
<p>Caltech is specialized and LAC-like (read ‘tiny’), but a major research Uni in its chosen fields, and it is unlikely that its yield will ever be high. A downside of LACs is their minimalist curricular offerings, and Caltech is no different. At least at MIT, if a student sours on thermo-nuclear physics, for example, s/he could switch to business or econ. At HYPS, they could transfer to any of a hundred different majors, including English/Lit. No such opportunity at Caltech; it’s all-math/science-all-the-time. </p>
<p>IMO, Caltech really has no “peers” bcos there is nothing else like it. Sure, other tech schools exist (such as Rose-Hulman, and the like), but none are close in status, prestige or selectivity.</p>
<p>Food for thought:
In this essay, written in 2008 by the head of Caltech’s Social Science Department, the author states that Caltech loses 80% of all students who are admitted to Caltech and MIT or Stanford in a cross admit battle. It also states that Caltech effectively does not compete with HYP. This suggests much about the type of student that caltech admits where most of them are either lost in cross admits or are effectively only admitted (in terms of elite schools) to caltech. </p>
<p>“IMO, Caltech really has no “peers” bcos there is nothing else like it. Sure, other tech schools exist (such as Rose-Hulman, and the like), but none are close in status, prestige or selectivity.”</p>
<p>^^yeah, I thought about Mudd, but it is surrounded by and an integral part of the other Claremonts. Thus, one could easily take a music, theater or foreign language class while still enrolled in Mudd. And importantly, the other colleges mean several thousand total undergrads with which to mingle. And, unlike Caltech which is grad-fcoused, Mudd is a true LAC – 100% undergrads. Mudd also offers a 3-2 program for econ with CMC, another program for biz with Drucker…the point being, more opportunities if, after two years, one decides that nuclear whatever is no longer their ‘thing."’ Mudd also has a Core which requires ~dozen hume/lit courses. (Does Caltech even offer 12 such courses??? sry, couldn’t resist)</p>
<p>“Does Caltech even offer 12 such courses??? sry, couldn’t resist”</p>
<p>ha!</p>
<p>by the way, notice that the paper fails to say one word about any competition for students coming from Harvey Mudd or the power UC STEM schools, UC Berkeley and UCSD.</p>
<p>I am a parent and was at the PreFrosh Weekend this past week. An admissions officer told me that Caltech was concerned about the low admit rate for women and researched the causes. They noticed that their application asked for membership in science and math organizations but that many of the female applicants did not list such memberships. So, Caltech added essays to allow all applicants tell in free from more about themselves and their science and math related activities. They discovered that many of the female applicants were not members of the organizations but actually were very heavily involved in science and math activities. Since then, their admissions rates for women have doubled because this allowed the people involved in reading applications to see a broader range of activities associated with math and science. </p>
<p>Caltech is quite supportive of female students and has events and staff that are devoted to giving women opportunities to express their needs and concerns. When there were fewer women, some felt uncomfortable by too much attention, but this is no longer an issue now that there are twice as many women at Caltech. If I could go back in time without having to risk not having my beloved son, I would do everything I could as a female student to get into Caltech. I wish I’d known then what I know now.</p>
<p>Forgot to mention that some of the top administrators at Caltech are women, even though there are still more men than women in faculty, but there are also far more men than women in the faculty at MIT.</p>