<p>I am not a student. I have seen lots of rejection letters my lifetime, and that statement is as UNORIGINAL as one I have ever seen making it totally fake and inappropriate.</p>
<p>The fact that others might find appealing or comforting does not really matter to me?</p>
<p>“that statement is as UNORIGINAL as one I have ever seen making it totally fake and inappropriate.”</p>
<p>I’m not saying you have to like the phrase in the letter. But I don’t see how lack of originality signals fakeness or inappropriateness. There are plenty of unoriginal statements that are genuine. I don’t think I’ve said “I love you” in any original ways, but I have really meant it.</p>
<p>There are dozens of schools that have to reject qualified applicants. If they all started using letters that said “You didn’t make the cut,” then that would be un-original, too.</p>
<p>In other Caltech reports, they lose some females and URMs to other better known colleges. The exceptional STEM kids often have really good choices.</p>
<p>This is respective to other “oldies” on CC, but the worm developed close friendships with female colleagues. A few times he stayed with one of these gal’s home over breaks. I think it helped that they shared Core classes, study groups, and Houses. Prior to college, he only had one female friend who was equally into STEM fields. His g/f is getting her PhD in a STEM field. A comfort zone.</p>
<p>Side comment, but I think all the graduates from Caltech and MIT and Mudd and the like are probably able to write well. I know Caltech has a required course on scientific writing, and MIT has that too.</p>
<p>You have 28000 applicants. 2000 are admitted. 5 to 6 times that is 12000. So which part of the group did the rejected candidate fit in? The 5 to 6 times or totally unqualified? </p>
<p>We had a pool. we had a smaller pool that we thought were fully qualified. You are rejected. Sounds very appealing.</p>
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Indeed !</p>
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<p>One exceptional student at D’s high school declined to apply to Caltech for precisely this reason.</p>
<p>The “we could have filled our class 5 times over” comment does make the kids seem like Lego pieces rather than as individuals who were carefully selected.</p>
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<p>It is very hard to vouch for how true that statement is. It is obviously what the people who have to compose the rejection letters love to say. But it is really the same reality in the admissions’ offices? </p>
<p>We all have heard that the first selection among candidates is fast and furious. Do we really have to believe that Princeton agonizes over 10 or 12 ,000 applicants? We also are led to believe that the adcoms do KNOW what they are doing and compose the ideal class according to multiple criteria. </p>
<p>My take? Adcoms do KNOW what they are doing and know why they selected the precise class of the year. The 5 or 6 times is just sugarcoating and lip service. The same lip service that so many traveling adcoms also try to sell on the road when trying to maximize the application pool. And perhaps the same lip service that takes the form of massive waiting lists.</p>
<p>I also happen to think that rejection letters should more factual than syrupy. In the end, the result is the same. Nobody likes a rejection.</p>
<p>xiggi - do you know the cross admit numbers between MIT and Caltech?</p>
<p>No, I do not have such numbers. You can assume that MIT will enroll about 65 percent of its admitted class. This means 500 will land at another school, including Caltech. I do not think that the numbers can be extrapolated from other cross-admit battles. Only the students would know, and perhaps the IR people at Caltech and MIT.</p>
<p>TPG, has Caltech released official acceptance numbers for the Class of 2016?</p>
<p>I heard one of the researchers from the “Why So Few” project speak about a project conducted in several cities to mentor girls who had already demonstrated strong success in science classes in science and technology – despite substantial intervention, the girls enrolled in STEM majors at very, very low rates. One teacher I really respect used to say, “When a boy gets a B on in Chemistry, it was a dumb teacher and a stupid test. When a girl gets a B in that same class, she’s convinced that she isn’t good in Chemistry.” I think there’s a fair amount of truth in that – and that the girls who actually apply to CalTech are probably very well qualified as a pool because many of the lesser-qualified girls have self-selected themselves out.</p>
<p>Ben Jones, who used to be the MIT voice here (before moving to Oberlin) wrote this several years ago:</p>
<p>March 15, 2006</p>
<p>Q: Can you give us some rough idea of the usual cross-admit breakdown with Caltech? </p>
<p>A: Going by last year’s mutual admits, it’s about 19% to Caltech, 64% to MIT, and 17% to a different college altogether. The response rate to our study was 92% (1390 of 1508 admits responding) so it should be fairly accurate.</p>
<p>I have not seen any numbers for Caltech, either for early or final. </p>
<p>I was trying to see if any historical data exists like 229 got admitted to both Caltech and MIT in 20xx, not necessarily which way they went.</p>
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<p>I generally don’t rib people about typos or grammar on an online forum, but it’s really hard to bite my tongue when people write something like the sentence above. ;)</p>
<p>Badly written manuals are generally due to bad translations, the writers not having a strong command of English, or the writing being farmed out to poorly paid hacks. That’s generally not Caltech (or MIT, I wager) students. Those folks on the whole can write very, very well.</p>
<p>quote:
“^English majors probably wouldn’t end up writing electronics manuals anyway.”</p>
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<p>My HS BFF with an undergraduate English from Reed and PhD from Yale now works as a technical writer at Microsoft. She is an amazing freelance writer and likes the regular paycheck and health benefits.</p>
<p>Re: #33, re: #15</p>
<p>Yes, something about glass houses and throwing rocks…</p>
<p>But a more serious point is that “writing well” can mean tailoring the writing to the audience. A terse, exact, and precise writing style may be desirable if you are writing for mathematicians, physicists, and engineers, but may not be what humanities and social studies specialists (including English instructors) are accustomed to, or what the general public would necessarily understand correctly. On the other hand, a more verbose writing style can be annoying to someone who just wants to get to the point and not read walls of text to find the point.</p>
<p>The issue with the high school explanation is . . . maybe this is just where I live, but AP Calculus, IB + AP Physics and Biology classes, science research fairs, etc . . are FILLED with women.</p>
<p>^ or because girls do what is necessary to get into top colleges. Most (at least the ones I know) aren’t that interested in these fields ( even though they can excel at them).</p>