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But you do agree that the class that matriculates to Caltech each year is indeed, highly meritocratic? It's not like Caltech students are dumb, which is what your tone suggests. Infact, they're probably even smarter than MIT students overall (based on grad school placement figures). I'd also say that the smartest individuals from Caltech could also compete on the level of the smartest undergrads from MIT.
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I never said that the final matriculating class at Caltech was bad. In fact, I know of no reason to believe that the student quality at Caltech is worse than that at MIT.
I am simply saying that just running a meritocratic admissions policy alone doesn't necessarily give you much, because at the end of day, what matters is which students you ultimately matriculate. Again, I would point out that, with the exception of athletes (which comprise a tiny percentage of the population), Berkeley's admissions policies are highly meritocratic - certainly more so than are the policies at HYPS. After all, Berkeley does not run AA, does not run legacy admissions. But does that mean that Berkeley ends up with a higher quality student body than HYPS? I don't think so.
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Dan Golden's book has also actually praised Caltech on this, and on the fact that Caltech is one of those "few" elite colleges that practise meritocratic standards.
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Yeah, but I think that raises other issues - namely the issues of student satisfaction and progress. Take graduation rates. Of HYPSMC, Caltech has the lowest graduation rate. What's so great about admitting a high quality class if a significant chunk of them don't even graduate? Like it or not, we live in a world where you are going to be judged on whether you have a degree or not. If you don't have a degree, many employers are not going to bother to even interview you.
Now, granted, I'm sure that many of those people who didn't graduate from Caltech probably transferred to another school and graduated from there. But again, that leads to the notion of student satisfaction. Somebody who chooses to leave Caltech clearly finds Caltech to be unsatisfactory in some way (otherwise, why would he leave?). While this is purely anecdotal, I gather from Caltech alumni like my brother that there are a
lot of unhappy students at Caltech, a notion that is reinforced by other anecdotes I have seen, including the one that simfish posted earlier. Ben Golub has admitted in other threads that there are some students at Caltech who do poorly, and I'm quite sure that most of them are unhappy (after all, it's hard to be happy when you're performing poorly).
Like I've always said, Caltech certainly serves well the students who are doing well. But what about those students who don't do well? Caltech prides itself on its rigor and, what Ben Golub calls, its 'adherence to principles'. But I doubt that does much to salve those Caltech students who are doing poorly. And I suspect even Dan Golden would agree that those Caltech students who are doing poorly are not being well served and would probably be better off if they had gone elsewhere.
Now, I'm sure some people would object that they are just talking about the admissions process solely. But you can't make a clean separation because student satisfaction is wrapped into the admissions process. Like I said before, I know a lot of people (like that Harvard girl)
who don't even apply to Caltech because they don't want to take the chance of ending up as one of those unhappy Caltech students.