Early numbers -- whole story : )

Colleges and Universities A-Z California Institute of Technology
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<p>So now the numbers are no longer a secret. I actually mistyped in another thread, for which I apologize -- it turns out the final number of adimts is 133. Thats 21 fewer students than the 158 we took early last year.</p>

<p>We had 605 applicants for the early round, up 36% from last year's 444.</p>

<p>Congratulations to all that got in. To those that didn't -- obviously the numbers demonstrate that things were more competitive and we were more conservative. (Having read the applications, the quality of the applicant pool was incredible.) So don't lose hope -- and if you were deferrred, take the advice in the letter and get in touch with the admissions officer in charge of your file, or have your high school counselor do so. Often, they can help guide you in sending us useful extra materials.</p>

<p>: )
Ben</p>

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<p>Thanks for the information. That's a pretty good percentage of applicants.</p>

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<p>It almost seems like a lot ;-). But I never cease to be amazed at how self-selected and excellent the pool of applicants is...</p>

<p>Err.. that 21 up there in my original post should say 25. I'm a math major at Caltech, really!! : )</p>

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<p>My son, who was admitted EA, can't do simple math ... either! Not a problem.</p>

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<p>Well, it would be 21 if the number I received, 154, is correct. </p>

<p>But wow, I can't believe the pool grew so much in one year! Did they open up to more students or did they really increase the advertising?</p>

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<p>Ben: everyone knows you math majors never actually get to see real, base-10, numbers.</p>

<p>I bet you have the whole Greek alphabet memorized by now, though. :P</p>

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<p>alpha beta gamma...</p>

<p>webhappy -- you are right... 154 and 21. You got the correct number last year. So my correction was wrong. Talking about numbers is proving to be more of a challenge than I suspected.</p>

<p>We didn't make any changes to our rules for early application, so the increase isn't for that reason. Rick, our new director, has really done an incredible job on the advertising/PR side of things (among others). There are so many people out there who are perfect for Caltech (and vice versa) who don't know it. We've sent out more postcards and other small ways to get people to start thinking about Caltech early on. Apparently, that's worked -- a 36% bump is a big deal.</p>

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<p>Your admissions department has indeed been doing a good job about getting the message out. I expect they'll be reading about it in a few weeks.</p>

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<p>Wheee! Good to hear, though you are mysterious ;-)</p>

<p>P.S. Oh, I think I see.</p>

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<p>ok this is completly out of curiousity because I have no idea how this works. does caltech flat out reject very many from the EA pool or does anyone with anything decent stay in and only those with nothing at all going for them get rejected? Or does caltech reject almost no one?</p>

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<p>We rejected a good number of the early applicants. I don't have the exact number here, but it was at least 100. So a deferral is not a polite rejection. It suggests you actually have a chance in the regular pool.</p>

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<p>I read about the success of your campaign just yesterday.</p>

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<p>thank you ben</p>

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<p>Interesting; Matt's post today on the MIT admissions blog also uses "deferral != polite rejection." However, from my understanding, it's very hard to get rejected outright from MIT during EA - I think maybe even less than the Caltech EA rejections, with a pool many times its size. I'm not sure what to make of it.</p>

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<p>Can you report the number of deferrals and rejections?</p>

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<p>Are there any estimates for the number of applicants that will be accepted under RD?</p>

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<p>Not ones we can talk about until RD is over. I'm pretty sure nobody else says how many they plan to admit at this stage -- would be pretty risky. We'll keep you posted as things become available though : )</p>