Item — HN Reader

I went to Caltech recently, and I feel I should weigh in on this.

The author of the article spends an unfortunate amount of time talking about SAT and AP scores, as if that's all that Tech cares about. Having served on an institute committee to decide the direction of the Admissions office, I can assure you that this simply isn't true. Caltech's sky-high SAT and AP scores aren't an end in and of themselves, they're simply a side-effect. Caltech looks, more than anything else, for a demonstrated passion for math and science. Near-perfect SAT and AP scores are just a check box on the way to demonstrating a true passion and ability for math and science.

And that's really key, because a perfect GPA, SAT & AP scores, and great teacher recommendations isn't enough to get in. There has to be something more. Usually that 'something more' is independent work in a research lab, science competition, personal projects, or somesuch, and so the incoming class at Caltech is never just people who know how to get good grades and do nothing else, but a crowd of voracious achievers, many of whom have spent their lives figuring out how to push themselves harder and faster towards their passions than allotted for by whatever system they were raised in. To characterize them otherwise is a mistake.

2 comments

Would you admit someone with a fascinating and very impressive personal project who also clearly hates school and barely got C- in all subjects including math and science?

Why would anyone? If they clearly hate school it seems like a mistake to try to entice them -- and an acceptance to CalTech may place undue pressure on them from family.

I'd reject with a note, "This student may excel, but not in a university setting".

Well perhaps "hates school" might really mean "needs an independent education". Maybe an independent study around great minds would let a brillant, yet academically unsuccessful student, flourish.

Most schools though, love to promote those who are a reflection of their definition of "greatness", so this sort of independent course is widely discoursed.

Why would anyone? If they clearly hate school it seems like a mistake to try to entice them

I think this is an admission that college, and defiantly CalTech is not about knowledge but academics, and the two are not the same. Imho, academics is also not the same as learning.

Could you expand? This doesn't compute to me, so maybe I'm missing something. Caltech is a school. It is structered as a school. If you hate school, why go to school? There are other ways to learn, and if I'm a Caltech admissions officer I already reject a full class of students who would love to attend and have great qualifications. So why accept someone who would neither want to attend, and probably shouldn't.

Well to me the most valuable things are knowledge, practice and discovery. After all that is how progress is made. And we study hard to be able to make discoveries and do things which will change the world.

And I firmly believe that almost all studying is at its core autodidacty. You get out of college what you put into it.

That is to say, self-motivation is necessary to acquire knowledge in and out of a formal academic setting.

But clearly where you are and who your peers are, is a huge influence on the human social animal. And because you might love learning but hate the rather heavy hand of authority at the pre-college education level, you might still want to co to college.

Specifically, potential to change the world may be intimately related to an almost pathological love of reason and hatred of unreasonable rules, methods, approaches and behavior.

I believe Caltech wants students who will do great things. But I may be wrong? That may not be the goal, actually I am quite certain that is not the only goal.

The way Caltech evaluates students is by using a proxy of academics. There are other proxies but clearly formal schooling is a main component of the evaluation proxy.

I will not go into the proven dangers of optimizing the proxy instead of the thing that the proxy is proxy-ing for.

School prior to college is well known to not just impart knowledge but also things like arbitrary rules and enforced discipline over agreed upon cooperation, etc.

College has some of that as well, although much less so then pre-college education.

Assuming someone has proven both a disdain for formal schooling and also a love of learning, knowledge, and scientific discovery, we could speculate that is a person with an extreme love of logic and hatred of lack of logic, who might to well in an environment with more knowledge and less B.S.

We all know anecdotes about great geniuses and the trouble they got in at school. Beyond that there is a lot of formal work done on "gifted" children and learning environments.

So an argument could be made that exceptional academic success at the pre-college level is a bad predictor of truly exceptional success in changing the world.

But I don't think formal academic success is just a proxy for Caltech. I think Caltech is specifically looking for kids who will work well within the system.

Caltech's filter for students proven to do exceptionally well within the academic systems is I suspect a goal in itself.

Actually I find Caltech's laser like focus on proven academic success refreshing. Because it is honest, open and complete.

Other schools make use of the same proxy but don't do it as well as Caltech.

So in my opinion, Caltech is pursuing a low risk/high reward strategy of potential Nobel prize winners who don't make a lot of trouble in school and don't tax their advisor's schedule too much.

There is an alternative slightly higher risk which might have a better chance of picking up real-far outliers.

tl;dr: Does Caltech value academic potential over intellectual potential?

There are many reasons why a person might have a C average besides "they hate school". Just as there are reasons why someone might score less than an ACT 36 / SAT 1600 besides they are not a brilliant thinker.

I was just answering a hypothetical that stated that the student clearly hates school. I took that as a given and worked from there.

An admissions officer at Caltech once told me they did look at applicants with poor grades and would overlook them if there was a good reason why the grades were poor and there was very strong evidence that the applicant was impressive anyway.

Yes, but you have to consider very carefully what "poor grades" means here. Coming from a Caltech admissions offices, "poor grades" is anything less than about a 3.8 (unweighted), or anything less than straight As in math and science.

Anything less is beyond poor compared to Caltech's admissions standards.

I wonder why people so often use athletic or industrial metaphors when talking about excellence in the sciences or technical fields? I look at mathematics for example as a creative endeavor. It scratches the same itch for me as drawing or making music. Why would I want to put any emphasis, as a creative person, on the rate of achievement in any of these fields? I would rather make one profound original contribution, if given my druthers. That is an extreme chosen for the sake of argument, but don't you admit that this might be just as valid a model of scientific or mathematical excellence?