<p>“But, over the years, I have noticed that most choose Stanford over Caltech…if they had the choice.” </p>
<p>OP, don’t underestimate the “if they had the choice” part. Probably the vast majority of the people who have trouble choosing between Stanford and Caltech in October find themselves happy to be at Berkeley the following fall because after a late-March admissions bloodbath, that’s the best place that actually accepted them. People seem to think “Oh, Stanford/Caltech accepts 8% of applicants, and I’m clearly in the top 1% of my high school class and top 1% of everybody who took the SAT/ACT, so no sweat.” They fail to see the full painful reality that such schools are taking 8% of the applicants, and almost all of the applicants are top 1%. And double that painful reality if you’re Asian.</p>