<p>It really depends what the OP/D wants. A little bit farther away from LA, a bigger place, more diversity than CalTech, but still a rich engineering environment in a suburb? With big brand-name appeal? Stanford, obviously. Roughly the same great urban location as MIT, but nicer dorms, a fancier name, better aid, and a lot more English majors? Harvard! The East Coast version of Stanford – Princeton? Want urban engineering options within a broader university, and maybe a tad easier to get into than Harvard? Penn, Columbia. CalTech too urban for you, and too small? Cornell.</p>
<p>Hey OP, are you still there? Why would the decision of what Ivies to apply to be in any way dependent upon whether you got into MIT / Caltech or not? I mean, either a given Ivy is of interest to you, or it’s not. Given that the 8 Ivies are all very different schools, why would you consider the Ivies as a group, as opposed to just the top 20 or so schools as a group?</p>
<p>lizzardfire (#15) is a Caltech student who serves on the Caltech admissions committee. Caltech consistently says that female students are not given preferential treatment for admission. It is true that a higher fraction of the female applicants are admitted–as in post #20, but the pool of female applicants to Caltech is very highly self-selected.</p>
<p>Post #15 misunderstands Affirmative Action in addition to not knowing the realities of CalTech’s admissions.</p>
<p>I’m really surprised that so many of you believe that affirmative action only applies to race. Although it is true that in the United States most affirmative action policies deal with race, the term “affirmative action” applies to virtually any sort of policy that takes into account some sort of personal classification to promote equality and opportunity. You’ll find that that definitions of affirmative action of both the National Organization for Women (NOW), the American Association for Affirmative Action (AAAA) and even the US Government (see [U.S</a>. Department of Labor - Find It By Topic - Hiring - Affirmative Action](<a href=“http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/hiring/affirmativeact.htm]U.S”>http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/hiring/affirmativeact.htm)) all include gender in the definition of affirmative action, as well as other classifications such as disability or veteran status. </p>
<p>Long story short: the belief that affirmative action applies only to race is incorrect. </p>
<p>As for the claims you make about Caltech’s admissions process, Coldwind, you are misinformed. Caltech has never practiced affirmative action in admissions, this is the stated policy of our admissions department, and in fact we’ve even had a book written about our admissions process by a Pulitzer-prize winning author. If you’d like to learn more about our admissions process so that you can speak of it with some knowledge, please check out “The Price of Admission” ([Amazon.com:</a> The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges – and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates: Daniel Golden: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges-Outside/dp/1400097967]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges-Outside/dp/1400097967)).</p>
<p>Caltech always has and always will base admissions on merit alone. To any of you who believe this is not true, I can’t do anything except tell you that you are wrong. My credentials? I’m a Caltech student and have been for three years. Our admissions policies in regards to AA are well-known by our student body, so please, feel free to talk to any Caltech student, professor, or admissions officer if you doubt what I say. Or head down to your library or local bookstore to pick up a copy of “The Price of Admission”. </p>
<p>WesDad: Although I understand the appeal of statistics (and the ones you listed are certainly correct) by assuming that the higher admissions rate for women means a greater ease for their admission, you overlook a key point. As we are a tech school, we have far more men applying than women (something which is obvious from your statistics: 77% of our applicants were male in 04). What is not obvious, but hopefully should seem logical to you, is that the women who do apply to Caltech are often more self-selecting than the men. Because of this, the pool of women we consider for admission are (by percentage) more qualified. Thus, the admit rate is higher.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, you can still choose not to believe me, but this is the truth: we don’t consider gender (or race, or alumni status, or athletics, or… the list goes on) in our admissions process. Not even in the sense of “well, a trombone player would fit in well with our school”. No. Caltech admissions looks for two things: merit and passion for/in math, science, and engineering. End of story.</p>
<p>Edit: I’d like to add that I don’t want to get into a debate about whether the policies of affirmative action are effective or not/good or not. I certainly respect and welcome the opinions of those who find it useful and effective for increasing opportunity and those who don’t. My posts are simply stating that Caltech does not practice affirmative action. I don’t make a claim on whether this is good or bad; it’s just the way it is.</p>
<p>One last thing: I just saw your reply in post 24, Coldwind. Maybe you should read the link above or check out the AAAA or NOW. Your statements are (and have been) easily demonstrated to be incorrect.</p>
<p>lizzardfire: Please read my posts more carefully as I never wrote that Caltech practices Affirmative Action nor did I suggest Affirmative Action applies only to race. You are the one who is misinformed, and, worse, are misinforming others. The facts speak for themselves: Female admit rate = 30%; male admit rate = 17.6%. These are figures supplied by CalTech. Please try to stay on topic.
P.S. My post #24 is correct. Your post #25 falsely attributes statements to others, ignores the facts & realities & is a bit off topic as an attempt to restore your credibility.</p>
<p>I can see this is going to be difficult. OK, ColdWind, let’s break it down.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>By definition affirmative action is given some sort of consideration to a person’s classification, in this case, gender or race. If we don’t give any consideration to gender in the admissions process, then admission is unrelated to gender. Makes sense to me.</p>
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</p>
<p>But wait a second, I’m confused… Post 15 says that Caltech does not practice affirmative action, you said it was wrong. Post 16 says that affirmative action refers to race and not gender, and you said it was right. Then you said that you didn’t say that Caltech practices affirmative action or that it only applies to race. Well, you are absolutely correct that you didn’t type those words–you just stated that you agree. Honestly, I don’t see the difference between saying something incorrectly and agreeing with the incorrect statements of others. It’s clear that in any case, you were not and still are not correct.</p>
<p>I have stated my credentials, my evidence, and my logic. You have done none of these three. You state that I am misinformed: I challenge you to show it. I have already explained how the statistics posted are not the entire picture. I understand that people may be skeptical of the interpretation in my previous post, but even if that is true the only alternative is that all of Caltech is lying about its policies. Are you implying that? I’m not really sure because your posts have been up to this point devoid of any supporting evidence.</p>
<p>One more thing:
</p>
<p>Again, I challenge you to show this. I’ve given my evidence, and in any sort of rational adult discussion you should realize that it isn’t just enough to make accusations, you have to support them. I await your response.</p>
<p>Post #27 does not prove any of your incorrect assertions to be anything other than false. My point remains simple, clear & true: CalTech admits females at a significantly higher rate --30%–than it does males–17.6%. Your post #27 is little more than silliness designed to obfuscate the point. Confusing the issue does not enhance your credibility; nor does misstating others positions no matter how lengthy & condescending your posts.</p>
<p>
Has this been shown by a male/female breakdown as to grades and scores? Of course, if you are going to talk about how much “passion” for science they show, that is just a narrower form of holistic admissions.</p>
<p>ColdWind:
Errr… actually, post #27 shows nicely that lizzardfire’s assertions were correct. In addition. it shows nicely that your messages are self-contradictory (supported with citations). In addition, it challenges you to (at least try to) prove your point at the same level as it was done by lizzardfire.</p>
<p>You certainly can refuse to do the last one, but I don’t know how you can refuse to accept the first two with a straight face.</p>
<p>The difference in selectivity can be based on more strict self-selection among girls, as it was already mentioned several times. Sure, it could be based on other factors (one of which you find to be “simple, clear & true” explanation), but you did not support your point of view in any way so far, so I don’t see why your interpretation should be accepted instead of others.</p>
<p>I actually have some anecdotal evidence which speaks for the “self-selection” version: three “tech-y” girls I have known decided against applying to Caltech and applied to MIT instead. Their reasoning ranged from “in MIT, they give preference to girls” to “I am not sure I am strong enough, what if I’ll find out that engineering is too much for me?” As American mainstream culture is not supportive to girl nerds, they tend to be less sure about their capabilities… and yes, all three had competitive “stats” for either institution.</p>
<p>Hunt: As far as I know, Caltech admissions does not track SAT scores by gender. The differences between SAT scores of our applicants and students are so small as to be meaningless, and the SAT score on its own isn’t really all that enlightening to a student’s abilities. Unfortunately, there are so many grading systems that tracking grades isn’t all that useful. That leaves tracking class rank, and again, there the differences are not that pronounced: 99% of applicants were in the top ten percent of their classes in high school (this according to more recent data than that on the CDS of 05, which as 93%).</p>
<p>For the most part, I go on what the rest of students here go on: the stated practices of the admissions office. Interestingly enough, the admissions committee voted in 2003 to implement some sort of AA policy: it was voted down 23:1 (this according to Joe Jewell, who was on the admissions committee back then). </p>
<p>I totally understand that to believe Caltech doesn’t practice AA, you have to trust that the admissions office, students, and profs are not lying. (The admissions committee is composed of 1/3 undergrads, 1/3 admissions staff, and 1/3 profs). As somewhat of a cynic, I don’t know that if the positions were reversed I would trust me, but then again we don’t have much to gain from making a controversial stance public if we’re not telling the truth.</p>
<p>So long story short, I don’t have any hard numbers to back up my statement, but I’ll stand by it anyway. <em>sheepish grin</em></p>
<p>Coldwind: I’m not going to bother responding. My previous posts are enough, and I don’t want to derail the thread any further.</p>
<p>But now you seem to be saying that the stats of applicants and students are so similar as to be “meaningless.” So, in what way, exactly, can the pool of female applicants be “better” than the pool of male applicants? If there are subjective criteria being used, it is certainly possible that there is an unconscious bias toward female applicants. Without more data, we are simply left with a school that says it makes no gender distinctions, but which accepts 17.5% of male applicants and 30% of female applicants. People can simply choose to believe whatever explanation best fits their worldview.</p>
<p>Caltech may not think they are practicing AA, but if they accept women at twice the rate as men they probably are - even if it’s not formalized. All else being equal I think the woman gets the tip. I don’t blame them - even if they did accept the girl from my son’s class and not my son. 
A similar thing happens at MIT. And for what it’s worth, MIT has found that women were succeeding at MIT at the same level as men, even when their scores were somewhat lower.</p>
<p>I apologize if I implied that ALL stats were so similar Hunt, I didn’t mean to. I simply meant that stats such as class rank and SAT score were very similar. There are “statistics” that differentiate students, but they are hard to compare: things like college courses taken (and of course there would be a higher weighting to something like quantum physics at UChicago vs. something like basket-weaving at a local community college), the amount and significance of research done, the quality of recommendations. Inherently, the judgment of these statistics is somewhat subjective, as is the entire admissions process. I personally believe that if it were possible to measure the quality of a student using only numbers, Caltech would be the first to do it. It’s not, though–Someone with a 4.0GPA but whose highest math course is AP Calc AB is not going to look impressive next to someone who is working on Partial Differential Equations but has a 3.6. </p>
<p>You’re certainly right that people can choose to believe any explanation that fits their worldview (although it’s worth noting that people can do this regardless of the strength of evidence). </p>
<p>Additionally, you’re absolutely right that “we are simply left with a school that says it makes no gender distinctions, but which accepts 17.5% of male applicants and 30% of female applicants.” So we’re left with two options: Either the school does or doesn’t make gender distinctions.</p>
<p>If the school does make gender distinctions, why would it hide this? If anything, this is hurtful, as almost every other school practices affirmative action. We are left to explain things like the fact that our student body is roughly 35% female, as opposed to MIT’s substantially better ratio, or that less than 1% of our students are African-American (I know that refers to race AA and not gender, but we claim not to practice either). </p>
<p>I also wonder why this fact would be so important that Caltech (and remember, the students, professors, AND admissions officers all have to be in on this) would create such a grand deception.</p>
<p>As I said previous, I don’t have any hard numbers to back up my position. All I can say is that I am personally confident that Caltech admissions does not practice AA, that the admissions office has stated this, and all I can do is attempt to support this with somewhat tenuous logical deductions and hope that you trust us.</p>
<p>mathmom: The main difference between Caltech and MIT’s admissions standpoints from a public point of view is that MIT claims to practice AA, and Caltech claims not to. I can’t claim it impossible for you to be correct, but I firmly believe (and hope) that you’re not. I trust our admissions committee not to be biased–knowingly or unknowingly.</p>
<p>Lizzard, I didn’t know that Caltech had fewer than 1% Af Am students. If I were an alum, student, or member of the board of trustees that fact would trouble me greatly. I can appreciate that theoretically, nobody gets in to Caltech on a "tip’; however, I find it hard to believe that the U couldn’t be doing a better job selling the school to the qualified population of Af Am students.</p>
<p>It troubles us greatly too–and we’re trying to improve it. Unfortunately we have very few Af-Am students that apply and even fewer choose to attend, despite the fact that we have awesome summer programs for URMs + Women, a strong recruiting effort, and scholarships for URMs + Women as well. I can’t say much more than that as I don’t know that much more. You can find our Office for Minority students here: [Office</a> for Minority Student Education at Caltech](<a href=“http://www.mse.caltech.edu/]Office”>http://www.mse.caltech.edu/)</p>
<p>Hopefully the percentage of Af Ams will increase as dramatically as the percentage of women has in the past few years. I think we could all use some more diversity.</p>
<p>Edit: I would hazard a guess that part of the problem is that there’s some critical mass–it might that because we have so few Af Ams that this keeps others away. By the way, it’s worth noting that even with that 1% or so, many of them (at least that I know, anecdotally) are actually just African, not actually African-American, and the cultures are very different. One of my friends is from Nigeria, another guy I know is from Kenya.</p>
<p>Lizzard, if you have two equal applicants and instead of tossing the dice, say to yourself “we could use more women” you are probably practicing AA. But it’s possible that the young women who apply to Caltech are just stronger candidates. I agree that critical mass is an issue - especially at a place like Caltech which is so small.</p>
<p>I normally do not like this type of debate but I like to put in my 2 cents worth here. If one can just say base on admittance rate, Caltech practice AA toward women then one shall conclude many colleges in this country practice AA toward asians. Since in general, percentage wise, there are more asians admitted to top universities than other groups. We all know that there is really no advantage to be an asian in admittance to most top universities. This is my 2 cents.</p>
<p>Back to the OP’s question
Why do you need to apply to Ivies if you have gotten in to Caltech and MIT early? I was under the impression that early acceptance was binding? No? Or are you saying you were deferred and I missed that? And why the ruse, claiming to post for your “d”? No harm in a kid asking the advice of her elders. <smile> We generally don’t bite.
If you are wanting a technically oriented school with research opportunities (like MIT and Caltech) why are you looking at Ivies? Maybe take a look at Harvey Mudd, or (though not in the same league) Rose-Hulman, WPI, RPI and the like? Or is status one of your requisites? My H went to a small almost unheard of LAC called Marlboro. From there, he went right to Yale and on to his PhD there. Sometimes, you can get more out of your education, if you plan on going on to graduate school, by waiting to go to the prestige schools as a graduate student. My advice to any student would be to see where you fit, and so long as a good education and good faculty are provided, to hell with the “name” that school might have.</smile></p>
<p>“If the school does make gender distinctions, why would it hide this”</p>
<p>Because to admit to “gender distinctions” in particular would open them up to lawsuits. No college will ADMIT that they practice discrimination. They make admissions decisions based on a desire to have a “well rounded class of qualified students”, what ever that means to that particular college. That may mean to a place like Caltech having a certain % of females, athletes, physicists, chemists, musicians etc.</p>