<p>Most current year shown on this chart is 2009.
[College</a> Results Online](<a href=“http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/search1b.aspx?institutionid=166683]College”>http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/search1b.aspx?institutionid=166683)</p>
<p>MIT
% Pell Recipients Among Freshmen - 17%
% Underrepresented Minority - 21.4%</p>
<p>Caltech
% Pell Recipients Among Freshmen - 9%
% Underrepresented Minority - 6.3%</p>
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<p>The information presented above is just something to ponder.</p>
<p>I don’t think your anecdote was worthless at all,bovertine. Great story.</p>
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<p>Except for most of the deserving kids who didn’t have the good fortune to attend a “feeder” high school.</p>
<p>I think it’s a caricature to suggest that the students are looking for a straight path to physics research with a 100% guarantee. The “top” student on academic grounds who is admitted to MIT has no certainty of that. I think that the students we are discussing (Pizzagirl) are probably guessing that their odds of a career in independent physics research are very low–maybe less than 1%. If you work the numbers, that’s not an unreasonable estimate, if the admissions decisions are taken at face value as a professional judgment of the odds of future success/contributions. The people we’re talking about are 17, after all.</p>
<p>It’s not so hard for me to imagine a student deciding to go into law, or medicine, or finance, or international relations, or . . . as a second choice to physics research, and being quite happy with it. Why would you describe this as being unable to deviate from a plan?</p>
<p>Deborah - The way I am reading it, it shows MIT as number 1 and Caltech as number 2 in the list for Pell grants.</p>
<p>URMs - Most schools count Asians in URMs. If you include that, both MIT and Caltech are similar. If you went strictly by African American and Hispanic populations, they might have been admitted but most of them chose MIT over Caltech, simply because Caltech is too small. Shrinkrap posted a graph of black kids admit/vs attend ratios in another thread discussing ivy admissions. If one looked at it carefully, it was obvious that there was a limited pool of elite kids who were admitted to pretty much everywhere they applied and most chose some of the schools over others. So Harvard got 64% of their admits while some other non-preferred school got only 20%. Does nt make the 20% school a bad one, just that the black kids preferred other schools. I am sure there is a similar chart for Hispanic kids somewhere.</p>
<p><a href=“http://finance.caltech.edu/budget/cds2011%20FINAL%204_28_11.pdf[/url]”>http://finance.caltech.edu/budget/cds2011%20FINAL%204_28_11.pdf</a></p>
<p>Let me bug mini a bit. </p>
<p>I also think Pell Grant supporters are looking at the wrong aspect of admission. It is wrong to accuse the schools of ignoring Pell grant kids since no one knows how many are able to make the cut academically at these elite schools. So if the school thinks people can’t perform below 2100 SAT score as an example and there is nt a big enough pool of Pell Grantees that are meeting the criterion, why is it the school’s fault for not accepting enough of them?</p>
<p>For Texaspg </p>
<p>“Percent Underrepresented Minority: The percent of FTE undergraduates who are Black, Latino, or Native American. (IPEDS)”</p>
<p>[College</a> Results Online](<a href=“http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/aboutTheData.aspx#pctunderrepmin]College”>http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/aboutTheData.aspx#pctunderrepmin)</p>
<p>It’s a grouping of similar schools, not all schools. It’s an interesting site. Check it out.</p>
<p>Texas, notice how little deviation there is in test scores for Caltech. You can find this information on the common data set. Looks to me like there’s a <em>very</em> heavy emphasis placed on that factor in admissions.</p>
<p>It’s a subjective choice what factor(s) a school chooses to emphasize most in admissions.</p>
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<p>Except for most of the deserving kids who didn’t have the good fortune to attend a “feeder” high school. "</p>
<p>No kidding. There are 30,000 hs in this country. Do you seriously think that once you’ve gotten past the Exeters, Andovers, Tafts, Harvard-Westlakes, Peddies, New Triers and Scarsdales that adcoms have any sort of relationship with the vast, vast majority of GC’s in this country?</p>
<p>Since Pizzagirl is back, let me add the clarification that I am not assuming that the “top” admitted student at MIT, on academic grounds, is a physicist!</p>
<p>I see Caltech scores as being narrow for only Math (you will see almost same numbers for MIT btw). It shows 700 is good enough for reading and writing to make the middle 50%. However, Most top schools have very similar numbers for matriculating students except for Math (700 to 800 in all areas).</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.yale.edu/oir/cds.pdf[/url]”>http://www.yale.edu/oir/cds.pdf</a></p>
<p>Caltech also has 33% yield, much lower than schools in top 10 rankings (Duke is probably closest at 40+). So admitted student profile might be some what different from matriculating student profile compared to Yale at 76% yield. That is not to say all admitted students are not expected to score 750+ in Math for certain but I am betting if you scored 800 in Math and 600 in writing, they will still admit.</p>
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<p>Because it’s unbelievable to me that only MIT and Caltech are the only worthy places at which higher-level physics could be studied, and that the rest of the elite schools with strong science offerings are just, well, one step above Mickey D’s. Because there’s no other field of human endeavor in the US that is like that, where there is really truly only one or two schools or don’t bother at all, the rest is just crap.</p>
<p>And anyway, there’s also a part of me that believes that there’s a heck of a lot of posturing going on about how these geniuses just couldn’t possibly be challenged to the full potential at a mere #10-#20 rated school, and they’d just die of boredom and their gifts would be lost to mankind. I think it’s pretentious and arrogant and usually not the truth anyway.</p>
<p>edit: deciding to bow out of the conversation for now. Each to his/her own. :-)</p>
<p>“it’s unbelievable to me that only MIT and Caltech are the only worthy places at which higher-level physics could be studied, and that the rest of the elite schools with strong science offerings are just, well, one step above Mickey D’s.”</p>
<p>Certainly some of the Ivies have decent physics departments, but a lot of people on CC will tell you that at even the best state universities, the physics professors spend most of their time formulating theories that will help them differentiate between their hind end and a hole in the ground.</p>
<p>Caltech’s numbers-heavy system isn’t a grand secret – that’s been known and open for quite some time, that they admit more heavily by the numbers and more formulaic, for lack of a better term. Which, of course, Caltech is free to choose to do, and students are free to choose to apply there or not apply there.</p>
<p>However, this thread was about Ivy League admissions and the role of merit. As excellent as Caltech is, it has very little presence outside a narrow world of science / engineering. Now, that’s neither good nor bad; indeed, plenty of outstanding colleges, including many LAC’s, aren’t known by John Q. Public and who cares. But having said that, there seems to be an implicit belief that Caltech is doing it “right” / has a system that others should emulate. </p>
<p>I find it very hard to believe that there is a single Ivy League school that seeks to be more like Caltech in any way, or who thinks, “Oh, wow, they got the ones I stupidly let go of because I chose the goatherder instead.” They simply have a different mission statement for their institutions, so how Caltech does it is irrelevant to them (just as their holistic approach is irrelevant to Caltech).</p>
<p>">>I also am of the belief that there are “feeder schools” that the top colleges draw from. They have relationships with the HS guidance counselors who can answer any questions
about a student that the adcoms have. It is rare a deserving kid gets left out.<<</p>
<p>Except for most of the deserving kids who didn’t have the good fortune to attend a “feeder” high school."coureur</p>
<p>Coureur, don’t you claim to be a scientist in real life? Would you cut and paste something out of context to support an argument in real life? Why should online be different, other than a lack of integrity?</p>
<p>I also doubt, if you wanted to have any credibility, that you wouldn’t not cite your sources.</p>
<p>Same goes to everyone who quotes others out of context and doesn’t identify your quote. No, you won’t get into an Ivy.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, #931, who has the viewpoint that MIT and Caltech are the only worthwhile places to study physics, which you are attributing to the students mentioned (elsewhere) by collegealum314, and under discussion by us? Are there students like that around you?</p>
<p>I don’t think that’s what’s going on with these particular students, whom MIT turned down, at all. I’ve mentioned what I’d guess their thoughts are, in posts #913 and #924, in the part of #924 that you didn’t quote.</p>
<p>If they go into law, their gifts aren’t lost to mankind, but they probably are lost to physics.</p>
<p>Addendum: The first sentence of this post is a question, “Pizzagirl, who . . . ?”. It’s not “Pizzagirl, who . . .” as if the next clause is an attribute of Pizzagirl. I don’t see where the attitude being attributed to these students is coming from. Not from them, as far as I can tell.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl - the implicit belief about Caltech is mine. I am not sure it applies to anyone else here. </p>
<p>The Ivies do what they do and everyone has their own reservations about the process. Does nt make Ivy admission process to be perfect nor does it make everyone who complains about some aspect of it an idiot.</p>
<p>Huh? How did coureur not C&P in context? He cited exactly what you said and refuted it with something that’s true - most deserving kids don’t have the good fortune to attend a feeder high school that has relationships with top schools. What are you objecting to?</p>
<p>And no, we don’t need to identify every single source of our C&P’s here if the original post can be found a few posts above. I can keep up with who said what, most of the time, and if not, I can scroll above. BTW, I got into an Ivy years ago and turned it down for another school, but I’ve done ok for myself, I suppose.</p>
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<p>What are you talking about? This is an internet discussion board, not a scholarly journal. I quoted the specific part of your post that I was replying to (pointing out its self-contradictory nature, actually). I thought it was rather obvious to anyone reading the thread which post that came from since it is just three posts earlier. </p>
<p>I’ll be happy to provide a proper scholarly citation every time I quote you if that is your preference. Please provide us with your full, real name and the research institution to which you are affiliated, and I’ll be sure include that in every post in which I quote you.</p>
<p>@#938</p>
<p>Maybe you can remember the train of argument, since you are 75% of the comments. If citations weren’t the norm, they wouldn’t exist.</p>
<p>I’m sure many would agree with you that spending all day online arguing with teenagers is doing ok.</p>
<p>And, as I said in my previous post, I was quoted out of context.</p>