sakky

Well, actually, yeah they do. I've heard some of them complain rather loudly.

However, I would call and raise you by pointing to the way that hiring and promotion is done in the private sector. If you think college admissions are subjective, private sector hiring/promotion/firing decisions are really subjective. Most states are at-will states meaning that your employer can terminate you at any time for any reason or no reason at all. You can be the absolute best employee in the company, and get laid off anyway. For example, if the company decides to eliminate your entire department, then it doesn't matter how good you are, you're out of a job. Heck, I would argue that there are certain companies where doing excellent work actually increases your chances of getting terminated. For example, you might be so good at your job that your manager begins to fear that you will replace him, so the safe thing for him to do is terminate you. I know a few people to which I strongly suspect this has happened.

sakky

Then take a reading class with a prof - where basically you run a specialized "class" of one student (yourself) and you do the assignments and readings that the prof wants you to do. I've done this. I know many others who have done this. I know molliebatmit is doing this right now. You don't need a formal class with lots of other students in order to interact with profs.

Heck, you may not even need the prof at all. You really want to learn advanced material that your school can't provide? Then get the textbooks and read them yourself. Or if the subject is so advanced that there isn't even really a textbook available, then read the latest research papers from EBSCO, Proquest, or JSTOR. If only a few schools in the world offer an advanced graduate course on a particular subject, and you don't happen to go to that school, then you can kindly ask that prof at that school for the syllabus for his course (rarely will you get turned down), and then do all the readings on that syllabus. Sure, you might not learn as much as you would within a formal class, but you can still pick up quite a lot if you're diligent.

What I would say is this. If you are really so good that you can exhaust all of the offerings at any top 50-100 ranked school, and you still have the thirst to learn more, you're probably well suited to get your PhD. And the PhD process requires extensive self-study. There's not always going to be a formal class available that will teach you the things you need to learn to advance your particular research. In fact, your research is supposed to be original, which by definition means working on topics that others cannot teach you anything about (if they could teach you that topic, then by definition, it isn't original). You're going to have to learn how to teach yourself.

Heck, sometimes teaching yourself is often times actually better than taking the formal course, simply because, frankly speaking, a lot of profs are poor teachers. Many times in my life have I found myself in courses in which the prof really didn't add any value over and above what I could have taught myself. Heck, in some cases, they arguably actually subtracted value, in that the teaching was so poor that it actually served to confuse you.

Big Brother 1984

I think we're getting somewhere too sakky.

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.

That said, we could probably just debate on the sole issue at hand: meritocratic admissions - with respect to elite institutions.

For some reason, Caltech has been able to maintain consistently high undergraduate standards - which means their method of admissions/school promotion is succeeding. 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.

Some here have already attempted to answer my question as to why people overall are highly dissatisfied with MIT admissions, and not with Caltech's/the Ivies'. sakky, I'll take your explanation about the Ivies "brainwashing" with the emotions of rejectees, but I'm going to say that CAdream's explanation of MIT admissions trying to be more profound, and highly overblown - trying to be a something to everybody; even the rejectees, when in their minds, MIT is only of a something to the acceptees - is more likely.

Big Brother 1984

Another interesting thought...

collegealum314, an MIT alum, is seemingly displeased with current admissions practises, whereas Mikalye, another MIT alum, is quite fine with them.

Perhaps both of you are acquainted differently with what MIT is all about - due to your different experiences with the institution?

Perhaps you could disclose what years you graduated from MIT?

collegealum314

I was in the class of 2000.

pebbles

what do your grad placement figures say? I'm curious. I'd be surprised if within the students who apply to grad school, Caltech students get into grad school at a significantly higher rate than MIT students. Are you sure it's not a difference of goals? I think your repeated claim that Caltech students are of "higher quality" than MIT students is a little too hopeful.

anitaw

I'm class of late 70's. Way back in the dark ages Alums were complaining. This is so far from being a new issues it is unbelievable.

pebbles

I dunno. I dont want to sound like I work for the admissions department or anything, but maybe this heavy involvement by the alums (complaining) is a sign that they have a strong sense of pride about their alma mater. Which then makes one wonder, why aren't the other colleges' alums complaining?

collegealum314

A few points:

I agree with sakky that you can get an outstanding education at a state school or a smaller private school. In fact, if you look at the bachelor's degrees of the professors at CalTech or MIT, many of them went to state schools. (Engineering is a bit different; many of MIT's faculty went to MIT for both bachelor's and PhD.)

The reason people are upset with getting rejected has little to do with the education. Frankly, I think the education at a place like Northwestern may be superior to Harvard. Many ambitious seniors see getting into a college sort of like qualifying for the olympics; when they get rejected, it's like the college saying, "No, you are not _really_ an elite student." To use an analogy, it's like training your entire life for the decathlon, setting the world record in every event, and then they give the gold medal to someone with marginal athletic ability. It's not like the person started training/studying to get that gold medal originally, but that gold medal comes to symbolize success.

Also, I disagree that people complain more about MIT admissions than ivy admissions practises. Plenty of people are upset with the ivy league schools. I'm sure part of the reason people are highly critical of MIT admissions is the MIT blogs. Harvard admissions doesn't ever talk about their admissions process. All you see is the results.

molliebatmit

And hiding information is better? This puzzles me.

Changing topics, I'm an alum, class of 2006.

collegealum314

"And hiding information is better?"
--------------------------------------------------------

No, not at all.

Big Brother 1984

Oh cmon pebbles, I'm not your arch nemesis. I just like good discussions.

I saw some grad placement figures quite a bit ago, but I forgot where they are now.

Ask simfish for them...simfish has data on just about everything college. You can't argue statistics.

And I'm not being too hopeful when I say Caltech students are overall, of higher "quality" than MIT students. This has basically been asserted on CC (especially on the Caltech forums), and one statistic doesn't lie:

Caltech:
SAT Critical Reading: 690 - 770 99%
SAT Math: 780 - 800 99%

MIT:
SAT Critical Reading: 660 - 760 97%
SAT Math: 720 - 800 97%

Obviously there are other intangible, subjective factors. However, when the MIT class admitted consists of a - significant - portion of URMs, unhooked but well rounded applicants that aren't really good at science specifically, etc. etc., it's going to be less competitive than a class that admits mostly strong candidates - and does a decent enough job retaining them.

pebbles, I'm not sure what you mean by a "difference of goals." MIT and Caltech are both "institutes of technology" are they not? To most people, the only thing that matters in a college is reliable grad school placement - not my words, but the words of one poster on an Ivy thread.

collegealum314

what do the percentages refer to?

Grad placement? It's confusing because you have them next to the SAT score.

also, what does "unhooked" mean?

Big Brother 1984

^
No they're not grad placement percentages. They're the %age of students who submitted the SAT scores.

I think though, that Caltech grad placement is around 80-something percent. Again, I don't know the specifics.

mollie, it's unfortunate that because of the MIT blogs, some people are not happy with admissions.

But perhaps people are really not pleased with the way MIT admissions has been presented to them? I'm puzzled here too.

simfish

I made the same arguments as well. I think the main issue is that many students just don't have the motivation (or imagination) to go into the depths that you just described (Even one of the Goldwater scholars at the University of Washington, who was extremely intelligent, did not go into grad courses until his junior year). There are problems with the state system - among them - the socialization system tends to make people conform to the traditional undergraduate education track in the state schools. It's certainly a lot easier to be motivated when all of your peers are highly motivated and when you have grades from difficult classes to motivate yourself. But that sort of motivation is an external sort of motivation that will hurt one's performance in graduate school - researchers should be motivated enough to pursue problems independently of whoever the hell their peers are.

It's certainly a mentality that needs to be changed. It's certainly not helped by the educational system - which subjects people to the mentality that they need an instructor to learn something - which is certainly not helped when the institution has pre-requisites and graduation requirements (students can get past them, especially with the help of a sympathetic professor, nonetheless, few who are capable elect to do so). There are also a number of professors who do get offended when you cut class, and who intentionally cover material in lecture that isn't in the textbook to increase class attendance rates (which is especially irksome when the instructor is a poor instructor).

Even Caltech has poor classroom attendance rates (source: happyentropy and the Caltech Abstract Algebra course). But happyentropy said that the professors generally don't mind that.

Caltech admissions does the best job it can for the type of institution that it is. As Ben Golub pointed out again - not all of the best students are hardcore into academics. Many of them do care about more superficial features in colleges - such as girls and opportunities to pursue extra-curricular activities.