collegealum314

ok, then, what do the ranges mean then. Does 690-770 refer to the interquartile range (25%-75%) of scores???

Big Brother 1984

^

Yep. I copied those from the Collegeboard site. I'm not sure how updated those statistics are though.

collegealum314

MIT's undergrad population is about five times the size of CalTech. (From what I remember, CalTech admits about 200 a year and MIT admits 1000.) Even if they had the same standards, it would make sense if CalTech's stats were a little more stellar.

pebbles

I mean that because the vast majority of caltech students are into pure sciences and the majority of MIT students are going into engineering, academic goals differ and placement into grad school is not necessarily a good point of comparison. (most engineering grads don't go to grad school right away, is what my impression was, where as an undergrad degree in math/physics with no phd is pretty much a deathtrap)

molliebatmit

Replying to several completely unrelated things here...

I agree with this totally -- I would compare it to trying to lose weight with a trainer and trying to lose weight by yourself. As motivated as people want to be to lose weight or to learn the entire Western canon, it's just so much easier to sleep in and miss your workout or just not get to the end of that tricky paper. It's much easier to stay with it when you have other people to keep you accountable.

Interestingly, I think that professional researchers are still very much reliant on their environments to stay productive, at least in my experience.

But I believe these are admitted student statistics, not enrolled student statistics. Someone can correct me if I am misinformed, but I believe it's pretty standard for schools to report the admit stats rather than enrolled. That's not to say that Caltech or MIT actually has higher numbers (because those sorts of small difference peeing contests are uninteresting to me), but it seems that the final numbers would be affected by some of the factors discussed in this thread.

Well, also, the actual MIT grad placement statistics aren't given (nor am I even sure that they're collected). About half of MIT undergrads go directly to grad school, but there's no data on what they want to do.

EDIT:
Nah, it seems to hurt students from other schools rather than students from MIT. Grad schools aren't too concerned about taking lots of people from a single school vs. taking people from a variety of schools -- of the 70 first-years in my PhD program, 10 of us are from MIT.

Perplexitudinous

I have to agree with pebbles. The difference in institutional goals obscures the usefulness of grad school placement in comparing "student quality," even if you control for the numerous variables (eg., MIT is bigger and therefore may have more applicants competing for the same number of spaces in top grad schools, which could hurt MIT on this measure).

Perplexitudinous

Very well, mollieb, you're much more knowledgeable in this area than I am. I'm just saying that there are factors involved which would make it hard to compare "student quality" just with the raw grad placement figures (if they even existed for MIT).

collegealum314

At MIT for chem E and EECS, if you have a 4.3/5.0 you automatically get into the Masters program at MIT. That might make grad placement difficult to compare between CalTech and MIT.

Ben Golub

I have talked a lot with you guys over the substance of this issue and have enjoyed it greatly but let me just say two things that are a little more abstract.

sakky -- "meritocratic freshman class" is like "windy prime number". The adjective doesn't go with the predicate. You mean to say "high quality class" or something. Let's just try to speak sensibly.

Anyway, I think one is not being honest if one says that final class quality is all that matters. Hypothetically, say rejecting all Jews means you enroll all the smart anti-semitic WASPs who hate Jews, and these WASPs are the smartest. (Don't think about the historical example this is inspired by. Just take the hypo as given.) Objectively, you get the best class, but by what means? The market values what you are doing, but what is that worth? Some things, like truth and justice, are more important than classes and markets.

As for mollie's claim that Caltech's way results in de facto discrimination, let's just think for a second. The fact that the incoming class is lily-white doesn't imply discrimination. It might (and, in fact, does) mean that no minorities qualified at the Caltech level applied. To put it very starkly (though this is a bit of an exaggeration), setting a standard so high that no minorities can meet it is not racial discrimination. Just because all the winners are white and Asian, doesn't mean you didn't give the other people a fair chance. Mollie, you're about to marry a white guy. (Mollie's love life entails de facto discrimination!!) Do you discriminate against non-whites? Admissions is the same -- the only difference is the n.

:-)

Big Brother 1984

"I mean that because the vast majority of caltech students are into pure sciences and the majority of MIT students are going into engineering, academic goals differ and placement into grad school is not necessarily a good point of comparison."

You're right on that. But we could still compare Caltech physics majors vs. MIT physics majors, and so forth. So a direct comparison of so called "student quality" is not entirely out of the question. I don't think anyone would deny that PhDs are virtually required for the hard sciences, hence the need for grad school. Now this comparison would require some insane data sets which I'm not even sure exist.

simfish, since you're pretty good with statistics and stuff, do you have any data on grad school placement?

To MIT's credit though, MIT is seemingly better at Med/Business school placement (since I'm pretty sure Law isn't a big thing at MIT...).

http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/p...ege_092503.pdf

Yeah...Caltech's Med school placement isn't really that great (~5...the other 2 are probably business dudes or something). We all know why...(if you don't...take a wild guess...).

I'm also wondering...what's with this idealistic notion about vaguely defined "institutional goals." A good college should have both successful job placement and grad/professional school placement, should it not? If it doesn't, then I don't really see how these "goals" are succeeding. We should be able to compare tangible statistics, because how else will we say definitively that MIT/Caltech admissions is succeeding or falling short of values? And like I said before, statistics don't lie - they don't equivocate the truth.

This might be a reason that people are highly dissatisfied with MIT admissions (and I will say to collegealum, that people are; even moreso than with Ivy League admissions) - because MIT has this notion of a vaguely defined "fit" which I think, is pretty much bs. If you're from Canada, and you have a gold medal at some International Olympiad, you are going to get into MIT. I haven't seen a counterexample to this, and this could serve as statistical evidence that yes - MIT does look for certain "hooks" and characteristics, just like Harvard looks for all-star football players and whatnot.

However, the blogs - a perceived source of frustation as collegealum has stated - makes admissions out to be some variable "fit" factor when many of us probably don't believe that. I mean, MIT has to be consistent with its admits each year right? Most of us believe that admissions is indeed a black and white thing, for example, the Ivy Leagues always take a good number of athletes, legacies, and URMs. But for MIT to go and try and "humanize" the process, is probably an overblown thing to do and ticks off a lot of rejectees that felt some emotional "fit"/connection with the institution.

I apologize if this sounds a lot like MIT bashing - I have absolutely no such intent. I'm just trying to voice what I believe is the truth, and what can define the truth. I've honestly really enjoyed the discussion.

molliebatmit

Ben, he's half-Portuguese.

I'm not saying there's any intent to discriminate on Caltech's side, but I think that Caltech's policy turns a blind eye to discrimination that's already occurred in society. And Caltech is okay with that for its purposes, and MIT is not, and there are many wonderful ways to make a world.

Big Brother, I disagree that "statistics don't lie" -- lord knows they do obfuscate the truth, particularly in internet arguments. I think it's true that a good college should have good grad school and job placement, but those numbers are unavailable at MIT. MIT's statistics can tell you how many people went to grad school or took a job, but they can't tell you what they wanted to do in the first place, because they don't collect that information in the graduating student survey.

simfish

It's almost impossible to define fit, since most MIT applicants have done a fairly good job of researching, and after the initial round of poor applications are thrown out (am I right? I may have forgotten), MIT starts looking for what the blogs terms as "fit."

What the schools can have, however, is diversity within their respective student bodies. Each particular group or organization within MIT has its own demands for particular students. The math team needs a particular group of students, the sports teams need their particular groups of students (Caltech, in this respect, doesn't even care because its sports teams are recruited by those who actually take the time to attend the sports meetings, instead of any previous experience in the sports team per se), the music bands need their particular groups of students. These individual groups may have connections with the admissions office of MIT, and may ask the admissions office to take a certain number of students for their own respective purposes. This is how Ivy League admissions is done, and it's how an institution that wants excellence in everything, so to speak, does admissions.

But it's unlikely that each of the individual groups in MIT, all added together, demand a substantial proportion of the people who've made it past the initial stage. Then MIT goes to other factors to triage the applications into accept/deny, and we just don't know what they are. One could hypothesize that the same application accepted one year may be denied the next year even if his application did not indicate a likelihood to get into one of such individual groups at MIT. Still, I wonder what the 15% statistic really means. It could imply the number of students who made it past the initial cutoff.

That being said, that's unrelated to affirmative action, which is an entirely different issue.

==
Anyways, interesting link I found:
http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/F...c.php?t=140157

simfish

Perhaps it can be said that Caltech has the privilege of being able to sort out the most mathematically inclined from the less so because it receives so few applications.

On a side note, some secrecy in the "admissions formula", so to speak, may be good. Since as soon as an "admissions formula" is released, quite a few parents are going to pressure their kids to fit in such "admissions formulae", without letting such kids develop in other areas. The MIT blogs say that they look for fit, however it is defined, but at least keeping the "admissions formula" secret will prevent parents from overstressing their kids to get into top universities.

Caltech's admissions are incidental to this. Many people don't apply to Caltech. But yet, a parent who looks closely at Caltech's admissions will be able to discern the factors that would greatly increase his child's chances to Caltech - the AMCs/AIME, the research, the passion for science per se (whereas many parents realize that there is no such formula at MIT/Ivies - and consequently don't have the option to load up their kids with so many extra-curriculars and empty activities/achievements). It's probably a good thing that not many people are interested in Caltech - since if Caltech's admissions policy was broadly applied to all of the top universities, well, we'd see an upsurge in the number of students who stress out all over the AMCs/AIMEs, research, olympiads, etc. (instead of stressing out all over getting their kids into as many extra-curriculars as possible).

A lot of the top universities do have influence over the minds of many parents/children - in that if they change the admissions policies, they may also be able to influence parents to make students conform to such admissions policies. But if these universities, instead, influence parents in a different direction - that is, that there is no set formula in admissions policies, it may at least make these parents somewhat more relaxed towards their children (though perhaps not for the SATs/GPAs).

There is a lot of stress over SATs/GPA, but this stress is fueled by the admissions criteria of nearly all universities - state universities included. This stress is somewhat separated from the pursuit of prestige - since there is the possibility that one without good SATs/GPA could end up a "failure in life." At least the top universities could reduce the amount of stress all fueled into empty extra-curriculars that students pursue only for getting into top universities.

Since Caltech's admissions is unique (and it has such a privilege since all the other top universities have different admissions criteria - and since math/science isn't the only thing that is valued in America - unlike a number of countries that want to become first-world countries - India, for example. Oh, the stress that would come from a similar institution in India/China), at least it can spare itself from the pressure that is mounted all over the other top universities. Now, there are other countries where admissions is purely based on "stats" on exams - China, for example (there are other countries where students are actually ranked according to exams, which are the sole way that students can get into universities). I'm not aware of how crazed out the students in China or those countries are though - but the attitude that many Chinese immigrants have over their children may be a symptom of the craze in China over examinations. It may be that this whole "college admissions" craze is somewhat exaggerated - since it seems that most of the top students and parents are fairly relaxed about the admissions process. "Most" still allows for the possibility for a large number of parents/students to obsess themselves over the admissions process.

While one could say that the pursuit of prestige is inherent in human nature (and in perhaps the nature of many social animals as well) - hey - the top humans in primitive societies got to mate more =P, most humans (and social animals) are acutely aware that they can't be at the top and accept their roles as such. However, a number of those who believe that they have a reasonable shot at prestige will start preparing themselves as such (environmental cues). A certain number of people have the personality to adopt such environmental cues (the so-called type A personalities), while others aren't as so fixed upon adopting them, even with exposure to such environmental cues. A number of psychologists do say that depression is an extreme form of those who accept that they can't be at the top - though this model is somewhat simple

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/.../t-125007.html

simfish

Anyways, in the way that sakky has defined "meritocratic admissions" - that it is contingent in the students who actually apply and decide to choose a school with "meritocratic admissions" over schools that don't follow such admissions policies - that sort of admissions is contingent upon the environment of the country and the attitudes held by its top students, and is completely independent of how the institution would best serve itself - by adopting environmental cues and choosing the best route it can for its own goals.

Let's face it - many universities in other countries practice "meritocratic admissions" too. In such countries, "merit" is often defined as scores on particular standardized tests. Many of these universities are different from Caltech - in that they're larger and often must bear the stamp of "I have the nation's best students period." And with that stamp comes expectations.

Caltech has an unique privilege. It's that national attitudes in a first-world nation aren't overly fixed on math/science, as attitudes in developing nations that want to become first-world often are. And with the attitude that America has, well, Caltech truly does get many of the students who are the most interested in math/science. Many of the top students do go to other universities, of course. Some people are more likely to find math/science enriching if they have another activity to pursue (there is some psychological research to support this assertion - Dean Simonton's books are an excellent place to start). Caltech is not perceived as having such activities (even though it has many of them, just that students may not have as much time to pursue them). It loses students this way. So what? Caltech still manages to achieve its goals, and provide an ideal environment for the students who want that sort of environment. Many of the top students are of different personality types. At least they have the option to pursue environments in concordance to their personality types here - in that they have many options to go through - many such environments to choose from, if they want to pursue scientific research.

Or so this is in an ideal society. Some of them don't get into the top schools - due to admissions policies with too few slots/affirmative action/the school's desire to branch out - take your pick. At least they can still go into state schools. Only that they are so-narrow minded as to actually follow the curriculum in the state school and not educate themselves - and don't have the peers to motivate them in such schools - and that by the time they actually get into graduate school, their fluid intelligence has actually declined (in math/science, there are few initial novel contributions after age 30 - yes, even in the times when 18 year olds could actually contribute something novel. Incidental memory peaks in ages 13-15 (SCIAM Mind April 2007, article on teenage angst in Western societies). Here's an interesting take - http://home.twcny.rr.com/hiemstra/tlchap2.html ). You could blame them for not motivating themselves - their willpower and what not - only that most people really aren't all that good in motivating themselves and that a nation built entirely on self-study may not be the nation with the most scientific output.

Eh, life's not perfect.

simfish

Edit above:
that a nation built entirely on self-study may not be the nation with the most scientific output/net utility.

Eh, life's not perfect. At least the state schools could actually make it easier for their top students to pursue their studies rigorously. In some ways, they do - with their own high-level classes. But these students may not be as motivated to learn as much as they do in top universities. But then the ones who really do have a personality suited for scientific research will still find their opps in state schools. Eh, complex issue.

It could also be made easier if so many people didn't trust the social skills/motivation levels of homeschoolers/unschoolers.