<p>Suin,</p>
<p>I guess I made two separate points. The one I think is more interesting is pure
speculation. I am predicting that along with the more balanced male to female
ratio there will also be a shift in choice of majors. This has nothing to do with quality.
For example at MIT the number of students in biology has grown tremendously
and I do not think anyone doubts the quality of the MIT biological sciences.
My point was that Mudd is in a different situation because it is so small.
If I am correct that there will be a shift in the numbers who choose different majors
what will happen
if Physics or engineering only has 3/4 the number of majors they do now?
I am not saying that this will happen but it is possible. Hopefully Mudd will
continue to invest in Physics and engineering as it does now as well as expand
other areas. This may however take more resources than it currently has.
I was suggesting that it might thus be necessary to increase the size of the student body.
In that way there would be a critical mass of students in all the fields.</p>
<p>The other point I made actually has nothing to do with the above. I am sure that Mudd
could fill its class only with students who score above 750 on the SAT Math
and have similar high scores across the board. We do not have the data for Mudd but for MIT we have for the SAT Math
Applicants Admits Admit rate
750-800 7,718 1,172 15%
700-740 2,701 26 10%
650-690 1,847 108 6%
600-640 807 2 0%
< 600 610 0 0%</p>
<p>By far the majority of applicants to MIT have MATH SAT scores above 750.
I am sure the same is true at Mudd. Note however that MIT admits over 100
students with scores lower than 700. It wants these students because they add something to the class that would otherwise be missing. The same is true at Mudd, but as I pointed out earlier it is not true at Caltech. At the moment Caltech really very very rarely would take a student
who scores below 700 and unless Caltech put in some programs to help such students
I think it would be unkind to do so.
The point I was trying to make was that given that Mudd like MIT is now
finding students within this group that it wants and can actually recruit, I was pleased to see that it appeared ready to also help these students have success. I was thinking of the
extra calculus course for credit and the extra chemistry help as well as the change in the core.</p>