Wow, I just found a VERY interesting article at the Chronicle of Higher Education, titled...
A top university wonders why it has no black freshmen
It's on Proquest - search for it there. College Confidential deletes posts with copyrighted content (meh).
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Thanks for describing the reality, cghen. And so long as Caltech admissions can only still rely on high school tests for its admissions, there's always going to be some number of students who have nice high school stats but who can't tackle the material, just because Caltech's course material is magnitudes harder (and different) from that in high school. There's always the option of an entrance exam for the university (as there is for many universities elsewhere in the world), but since such an exam would be highly unique compared with other universities in the United States, it would significantly depress the number of applicants.
I'll just quote something from the article:
Quote:
Their abilities notwithstanding, Charlene C. Liebau, director of undergraduate admissions at Caltech, says that black students who choose to enroll at other colleges do so for the same reason that most other students decide to go elsewhere: They are simply not willing to narrow their study options to Caltech's focused curriculum.
"When you go to the kitchen table with all your offers in front of you, that's when the soul-searching takes place," Ms. Liebau says. "You ask, `Am I really ready to make a commitment to math, science, or engineering at this point?' In many cases, the answer is no."
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