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I'm mystified by all this comparison to Caltech. The OP talks about
the oddness of MIT admissions, not MIT in comparision to Caltech.
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That's my point exactly. First off, I don't find MIT admissions any more odd than the admissions of the Ivies or Stanford. So why single out MIT?
Secondly, the OP doesn't bring up Caltech. But clearly other people have. Which is why we ought to talk about it. Is Caltech really as "pure" as others have implied?
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If I could
be 18 again and had the chance to spend my days listening to Harvard
professors lecture, I would.
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Actually, this gets to an entirely different subject, but I wouldn't necessarily listen to Harvard professors lecture, or the profs of any other prominent research university. That's simply because just because you're a brilliant and prominent researcher who makes breakthrough discoveries doesn't mean that you actually know how to
teach . Teaching is a skill that is quite orthogonal to your ability to research. Research is all about producing groundbreaking insights. But teaching has to do with the ability to verbally communicate clearly and to a level calibrated to your audience such that you don't perenially talk over their heads. It's also about being able to convey enthusiasm about a subject to an audience who are not necessarily going to major in your field, and illustrating why your subject should be interesting to them.
As a case in point, I was "taught" (if that is the right word) college mathematics by a number of world-famous math profs. Yet the teaching was
terrible , so much so that plenty of students concluded that they would learn more by not going to lecture, but instead by just sitting at home, reading the book. Those guys were poor teachers. I remember sitting in lecture wishing that my old high school math teacher was giving the lectures instead. Sure, my old HS teacher was no "brilliant" math researcher. But hey, at least he had the ability to teach math in a way that made it fun and interesting, something that these famous profs surely did not have. I could partly understand why these profs were such poor teachers too. After all, if you're a world famous math prof researching advanced topology (or whatever it was), you're probably bored teaching basic linear algebra and calculus to a bunch of 18-19 year olds.
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Even then, is Caltech's top priority the happiness of its own students? Or is it the fulfillment of its mission goals, which may make some students happier, at the cost of the happiness of some other students? A substantial portion of Caltech students are discontent with the institution, but a substantial amount of them also feel that Caltech is the perfect place for them. I think one of Caltech's main problems is how to make life better for the students discontent with their current situation (given its high transfer-out rate), while retaining the rigor it allows for those who feel that it's ideal for them
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Well, actually this is a slightly different topic than the one at hand. The notion of Caltech unhappiness actually elicits an ex-ante response - in that, like I said, the majority of people admitted to Caltech choose not to go, again, probably because they've heard of the dissatisfaction of some of the student body and they don't want to take the risk that that might happen to them.
But it still leaves as an open issue that it doesn't really matter what sorts of admissions policies Caltech chooses to run. It only matters who Caltech actually
able to matriculate . You can run the most meritocratic admissions policies in the world, but if many of your best admittees choose not to go (as evidenced by the strikingly low yield of the scholarship winners), then that obviates much of your meritocratic character.