I had to laugh when the author mentioned computer programs in an article about intelligence … even though he used weasel-wording (“deemed intelligent” and “ways quite different”).
It’s really not fair to compare Caltech’s entering class stats to anyone else’s because Caltech enrolls only about 225 freshmen a year. Given the level of academic resources they have to offer, it’s pretty easy for them to fill that many seats with near-perfect test scores.
But FWIW, here are more recent data from each school’s 2014-15 Common Data Set:
Harvard
25th percentile SAT: 700 CR, 710 M, 710 W
75th percentile SAT: 800 CR, 800 M, 800 W
% scoring 700-800: 78.47% CR, 81.09% M, 80.17% W
MIT
25th percentile SAT:: 680 CR, 740 M, 690 W
75th percentile SAT: 770 CR, 800 M, 780 W
% scoring 700-800: 67.0% CR, 95.6% M, 71.1% W
Caltech
25th percentile SAT: 730 CR, 770 M, 730 W
75th percentile SAT:800 CR, 800 M, 790 W
% scoring 700-800: 91.58% CR, 99.5% M, 90.59% W
Yale
25th percentile SAT: 710 CR, 700 M, 710 W
75th percentile SAT: 800 CR, 800 M, 790 W
% scoring 700-800: 79% CR, 79% M, 81% W
Princeton
25th percentile SAT: 690 CR, 710 M, 700 W
75th percentile SAT: 800 CR, 800 M, 800 W
% scoring 700-800: 74.27% CR, 78.82% M, 76.45% W
Stanford
25th percentile SAT: 680 CR, 700 M, 690 W
75th percentile SAT: 780 CR, 790 M, 790 W
% scoring 700-800: 68,71% CR, 77.54% M, 73.78% W
These are all very impressive figures, but there are differences among these schools. As one might expect, the entering classes at Caltech and MIT are stronger in Math top to bottom than are HYPS; there’s no difference at the 75th percentile, but a definite difference at the 25th percentile and quite stark differences in the percentage of the class coming in with sub-700 SAT M scores. By the same token, however, MIT’s entering class is notably weaker at the bottom on the verbal tests (CR and W), with a third of the class coming in with sub-700 CR scores. Stanford’s entering class is similar to MIT’s at the bottom in CR, with 31.29% coming in with sub-700 CR scores. H, Y, and P are more balanced between CR and M, not as strong as Caltech and MIT in Math but decidedly stronger than MIT in CR. Caltech’s figures are strongest across the board (though a bit stronger in M than in CR or W), but again, you need to take that with a grain of salt because they’re filling such a tiny class.
I worked for a company that paid at least white male Ivy grads a 10% bonus. That is not anecdotal. I know it to be a fact. However, no matter how this question is answered someone will bring up an exception. So the only thing to do is to do your best at whatever school you’re at and don’t count on its Ivyness or Ivyless to save you.
@ucbalumnus I stand corrected. I was basing my opinion on my memory of reading Daniel Golden’s 2007 book ‘The Price of Admission.’
@Canuckguy,
Also keep in mind that the 1390 25th percentile number you’re citing is potentially highly misleading. The colleges report their 25th and 75th percentile SAT CR scores and their 25th and 75th percentile SAT M scores—not their 25th and 75th percentile (CR + M) scores. US News and some other data sources then add those 25th percentile scores together and report the 25th percentile as a combined score of 1390. But that’s a made-up number. It’s doubtful that at a school like Harvard 25% of the entering class had actual (CR + M) scores of 1390 or lower.
To use Harvard’s more recent 2014-15 figures, the middle 50% SAT CR was 700-800 and the middle 50% SAT M was 710-800. But it could be that the 25% who scored below 700 in CR were all 800 scorers in M, and the 25% who scored below 710 in M were all 800 scorers in CR. Thus the actual 25th percentile (CR + M) for entering Harvard freshmen might have been closer to 1500 than the 1410 you get by adding the 25th percentile CR to the 25th percentile M. It seems more plausible to me that Harvard would admit a reasonably large number of applicants whose scores were lopsided in favor of M, and a similarly large group whose scores were lopsided in favor of CR, than that they would admit 25% of the class with (CR + M) less than 1410.
EDIT – I wrote this before seeing bclintonk’s stats above. I apologize for repeating things others have said.
In the 2014-2015 IPEDS database, the schools with the highest 25th percentile sums are below. Obviously Caltech does best. I suspect this primarily relates to a different type of admissions process than most other “elite” colleges, which places less emphasis on things like maintaining good ethnicity balance and being a top athlete. All the others besides Caltech have what I’d consider to me negligible differences, so Harvard does not appear weak to me by this metric compared to other elite colleges. Aside from general selectivity, the schools that do especially well on this metric appear to be the ones that either emphasize tech (Caltech, MIT, Harvey Mudd, Olin) or those that focus more on test scores in the admission process than HYPSM type elite colleges (Chicago, Vanderbilt, WUSTL).
1500 – Caltech
1435 – Chicago
1430 – Vanderbilt
1420 – MIT, WUSTL
1418 – Harvey Mudd
1410 – Harvard, Olin, Yale
I also looked in to the relative math and CR scores. The ones that had the highest Math in relation to CR were Harvey Mudd, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Caltech (in that order). The ones that had the highest CR in relation to Math were Haverford, Williams, Yale, and Chicago. This Math/CR ratio seems to closely be correlated with percent majoring in tech, rather than the absolute test scores.
You’re all dancing on the heads of pins anyway.
“I worked for a company that paid at least white male Ivy grads a 10% bonus. That is not anecdotal. I know it to be a fact.”
I don’t believe it. Name the company.
It’s a shame that people put down Caltech who have never visited. Seven main houses, all near each other. Kids are assigned temporary housing for a week, so they can spend time in each House, dinners. Choice of activities during the day. Then kids chose top 3 houses, and houses rank too. Once house selected, chose roommate. The 8th house is also available, which doesn’t have all the social activities. Many private rooms.
Meal plan only for lunch and dinner during the week. Lots of BBKs during weekends. Buses to movie openings.
Classes don’t start until 11:00 a.m.
3:1 student/faculty ratio. Lots of chances to do research. Tons of clubs and if one u want doesn’t exist, u can create your own. Free food events. Beautiful campus.
When we visited the Los Angeles schools (USC, UCLA, CMC), Caltech was my favorite. Then the kids read about glomming, and that was that.
@bookworm,I think Caltech would be wonderful for the right kid. But, it is very small. For kids that want a big campus, big time athletics , it would just probably not be a good fit. And I don’t think you need to visit to figure that out. My husband went to CMU . He had an okay time there but has said he thinks he would have enjoyed a bigger , different kind of school more. We know our sons well enough to know that really small, tech oriented schools were not the best fit for them and neither gravitated to smaller schools or LAC’s anyway. They are both engineers. Kids that gravitate to MIT or Caltech may very well be unhappy at the schools my kids ended up. As always, it’s about fit.
No doubt about it- Caltech is as prestigious as it gets!
I had to look up glomming:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=glomming
“A practice commonly used at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) by men desiring female companionship. Due to the lopsided demographics (75% men, 25% women), one finds a dearth of women at Caltech. Thus, several men tend to court a woman at once. So, glomming refers to the practice of several men hooking onto (not literally) to one woman.”
The lopsided gender ratio at Caltech appears to be recognized by the administration as a negative factor relative to, say, MIT. (Caltech/MIT cross-admits generally pick MIT over Caltech. Gender ratio seems to be a significant factor in this choice for many cross-admits.)
For the last two years (classes of 2019 and 2020) the admitted student gender ratio at Caltech has been very close to 50/50. As at MIT, women applicants are now admitted to Caltech at roughly twice the rate of men applicants. If the trend continues, the gender ratio of the Caltech undergraduate student body may well be 50/50 in a couple of years.
Caltech basketball has had losing streaks as long as 310 games in a row (among conference games). Baseball had a 10-year conference losing streak, spanning hundreds of games. Volleyball has had similar losses. A very small school that emphasizes tech and does not make academic allowances for athletes is not exactly a recipe for athletic dominance.
Ethnicity balance shows a similar degree of lopsidedness compared to other elite schools. For example at HYPSM… type elite schools that try to maintain a certain ethnicity balance, ~7% of students are Black, and ~17% are Asian. In contrast at Caltech, ~1% of students are Black, and ~45% of students are Asian.
Caltech has a different admissions policy than other HYPSM… type elite private schools, particularly in regards to making allowances for admits that are less academically competitive than the typical student, so it’s not surprising to me that the school shows a different pattern than others in the listed lower percentile scores. In my opinion, Caltech is a great school and there is nothing wrong with Caltech’s admissions policy. I think it’s good to have different types of policies and different types of colleges, giving students more varied options to choose from instead of choosing among more similar ones.
As a current student at Caltech, I just wanted to clarify a few things:
- All of the eight Houses are major Houses, and they all have social events of some kind or another - they are all fine Houses.
- Freshmen actually rank all of the Houses, not just their top 3.
- A number of freshmen get roommates, but there are usually also a number of freshmen who get single rooms, which are smaller but more private than doubles.
- There do exist classes that start earlier than 11 am, although the majority of them start at 10 am or later.
And in response to some of the other comments that I’ve happened to come across: Yes, there are more males than females, but I haven’t found the gender ratio to be too much of a problem. Some people show little to no interest in dating, so the ratio actually ends up being more even than one might initially expect.
Anamfija,
Thanks for clarifying. Are there other things you like about Caltech? Few people on this forum know current or alumni from there.
An older cousin who graduated from there absolutely loved being surrounded by and challenged by an overwhelming critical mass of highly intelligent/genius type students who were PROUD to be quirky, nerdy, and marching to the beat of their own drums.
He still looks back on those years with fondness more than 4 decades later.
Sure, I can talk about some of the things I like there (if anyone has any particular questions, feel free to ask). For reference, I am a senior in chemical engineering (specifically in the biomolecular track).
So one of the things I like is the huge emphasis on research. Because of this, it is relatively easy for undergraduates to partake in research. Many students choose to participate in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program (details here: https://sfp.caltech.edu/programs/surf/program_description). Many students also do research during the school year. You can also participate in the research of others - there are a number of economics, brain research, and other miscellaneous studies that you can volunteer for (and sometimes get paid for). As an example, one project that I would really like to participate in this year is one for Professor Kirschvink in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~jkirschvink/). From what I currently understand, the project deals with seeing to what extent human beings can be trained to detect magnetic fields, and trying to learn about how exactly this works.
Professors are pretty approachable, whether it’s for classwork questions, research, or general life advice. I think that this is helped by the fact that the undergraduate population is pretty small (approximately ~1000 undergraduates total). When I was first applying to schools, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted a “large” school or a “small” school, but I’m glad that I ended up choosing a “small” school. I like actually knowing and speaking to many of my peers (as opposed to being in a situation where I don’t know many of my fellow undergraduates because there are just so many of them). Some of the “options” (what Caltech calls its majors) consist of more students than others. Chemical engineering (from what I’ve observed) seems to have approximately 10-20 students per year.
Another thing I really like is how Caltech generally approaches homework/quizzes/tests. Working with other students is expected for (and pretty much necessary for) most homework assignments, at least to some extent. Because of this, I feel that I have gotten much better at listening to the reasoning of others, explaining my own reasoning to others, and working with other people to dissect questions whose answers are not obvious.
Most quizzes and tests are “take-home,” with the trust that students will not cheat (I believe that most students do follow this expectation, but there exists a system for addressing cheating just in case). This is super convenient, and it allows students to take tests at times that suit them best (as an example, I prefer taking my midterms and finals from about midnight to 4 am).
Finally, I would like to mention how Caltech students (at least the ones I work with) are not competitive about grades. They try to help other people, and they are glad to help. They don’t withhold assistance in order to prevent someone from possibly scoring better than them.
I was academically the top person at my high school - at Caltech, I am relatively average. But I think that I’m happier about my academic status than I’ve ever been. When I finally work out a tough problem with other people, or when I happen to score highly on a test or in a class, it is actually meaningful to me (rather than being a “given”).
So yeah, those are a number of things I like about Caltech. As I previously mentioned, everyone should feel free to ask questions if you have any.
Glad Caltech has worked out so well for you, @Anamfija .
Here is an article about the evolution of Caltech basketball. http://www.si.com/college-basketball/2015/11/23/caltech-basketball-losing-streak-oliver-eslinger
Have you found that many students go to the games?
Hmm. I don’t know how many students go to the games, as I haven’t gone myself . . .
But I do know that they often offer free food, t-shirts, and more at games, so that’s a plus.
Since you’re a senior , you still have time to catch a game and grab some free food and a t-shirt in the process! 