Caltech EA 2024 Discussion

[gRw110]

@Cruzss

This is EXTREMELY late, but I thought I would respond anyway. @CAEngineer and @gRw110 schools holding grudges for me pulling applications is honestly an extremely rare occurence. It Ultimately doesn’t come down to the grudges themselves that establish a bad precedent, but the kinds of students that apply. Think of it this way: I am leaving behind a successful Science Olympiad program that draws in most of our school’s brightest students, often leading them in a STEM-like direction. Because i am at a public school, a lot of student interest is created/peaking by way of Science Olympiad. If I, as a STEM student from this high school leave a bad precedent by rejecting a school I am accepted to (RD, EA, or otherwise), I am not setting a bad precedent for the school, but simply for the kind of student I am. Harvard, for example, discriminates against non-bio STEM students because so many of them pass Harvard up to attend MIT instead. Every student that I know going to Harvard in STEM is in either biology or minoring in some sort of humanities topic. As such, the college may reject students with similar activities and interests to me in future years because I passed up their offer for a more STEM-focused college, creating the illusion that they dislike my high school because I declined their offer of admission when in REALITY they reject many high-performing students from my school because they come from similar programs and, as such, have similar interests. They do not reject students from my high school because they hate my high school, they reject those students to increase yield. However, this is a very rare occurrence that only happens at extremely prestigious schools, because any school that sees a student they really want on their campus will accept them regardless of past experience. Yale, for example, accepted me with a likely letter and a personalized phone call despite being a humanities school because they want to increase their STEM presence despite knowing that I would probably pass their offer up for a school like MIT or Caltech.

TL:DR Colleges don’t hold grudges against high schools, they hold grudges against certain types of students who they fear will decline their offer of admission to minimize the amount of spots they need to fill from the wait list.

Dude, your misunderstood our very polite question. Sorry now I have to a little more direct. You got into MIT during EA. As a URM, you have a very nice hook in the application game. I would think since you have been admitted to MIT, you would be nice enough as to withdraw some of your RD applications to colleges that you wouldn’t have considered over MIT, to make room for other applicants in your school who may be equally or more qualified than you.

Here are the colleges you were applying RD:
Harvard, Stanford, Yale, JHU, Columbia, Princeton, Brown, UChicago, HMC, Williams, Pomona, Cornell, UPenn, Norheastern, YaleNUS, UCSD,UCLA,UCB,UCI

One would think a STEM-minded student would want to keep these colleges:
Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Cornell, UCLA and UCB, as they are good in STEM. But withdraw from all others during RD. What I wanted to tell you is that it is not nice to go trophy hunting on college admissions if you have been admitted to your dream college in EA already.