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Comment by weel | Hacker News Reader

I recall speaking years ago with the head of admissions at Caltech, who had previously had a similar job at MIT. On his desk was a newspaper clipping about legacy admissions, so I asked him for his opinion. He was a very polite man, but you could see the fire in his eyes: he was not happy with it, and rather emphatic in declaring that neither Caltech nor MIT would do such a thing. (This is definitely consistent with my experience at Caltech. I know of one Caltech student who was the grandson of a big-time donor, but he was also one of the best in his class, and clearly had what it takes to get in anyway.)

I find it very interesting how you describe applying to Ivy League schools as a "total crapshoot." I wonder what your opinion is about high-end science/engineering schools (not just Caltech and MIT, but also CMU, Cornell, Harvey Mudd, etc.) Is their admissions process just as flawed? Or are they more predictable?

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From a libertarian/utilitarian POV, the processes at those schools are "less wrong" in that they are more likely to admit a student with perfect test scores, incredible grades, and little if any extracurricular activity outside of modding xBoxes and lan parties. Those schools are looking for raw smarts and technical aptitude...

<Ivy League Douchebag>...which is why so many M.I.T. grads end up working for Princeton/Harvard/Yale grads.</Ivy League Douchebag>

At the Ivies, lots of kids apply with perfect grades and scores. Those schools have the luxury of passing on most of those kids in order to select the ones who are truly interesting and/or clearly hell-bent on changing the world for the better.

In my own case, I was applying from a small public high school in a resort town in Western Michigan. Having gone back and pulled my files once I got the admissions job, my read on why I was admitted was because "kid is being doing more with what's available to him in this odd part of Michigan than the other kids we see in his state, he also sounds pretty cool and fun and everyone likes the guy. Plus he's in the top 1% of his class."

So I was admitted to bring in some color and culture, despite being a white male. Despite being "the smart guy" in every social situation growing up, that wasn't even a factor in why I was admitted. My credentials put me squarely in the middle of the pack academically unbeknownst to me. That's humbling but also great self-knowledge to have about oneself. Sometimes I think students at these schools should be told why they were admitted. I probably would have felt better about being the president of half a dozen clubs and playing in the most popular band on campus had I know that's why they brought me there to begin with. :)

Pretty good story =)

I did simulated admissions decisions for a couple hours as part of an education class. The admissions officer who came in worked for Cornell engineering so I have some insight into that process. Basically the highlights were:

* Each application has to be read and judged in 3 to 4 minutes. That includes the full transcript, SAT scores, all the essays, the letters of recommendations, etc. The goal was to finish 3 applications every 10 minutes.

* The admissions department gets a printout twice a day with the predicted stats of the new class, as well as the predicted U.S. News & World Report ranking. How hard your application gets graded largely depends on what the report in the last three hours said, and standards can vary wildly from day to day.

* If we came across someone who seemed like a total douchebag but who had great grades and other things the college was looking for, we were told to just let them in and never think about it again.

Bischoff was at MIT?

Yeah, but Caltech has a better rep than MIT on the issue, according to Dan Golden. I interviewed him for the Tech (Caltech's student newspaper) when the book came out, and he said that he had intended to write his "this school bluntly refuses to countenance legacy admissions" section about MIT, but everything he heard forced him to change his plans to talk about Caltech instead.

More generally, that far right on the bell curve, the differences are so marginal. Instead, the main process is surpass a certain bar of accomplishment and then stand out in some unique way that gets you noticed. There are 10 perfect SAT scores/ultra-high GPAs for every spot in an ultra-elite engineering school like the ones you list. Small variations in awesome are just extremely hard to rank.

Bischoff is now at Case Western in Cleveland (where I attend). I actually just talked with him last night. What were your impressions of him generally?

Loved him. Total math dork, and he really enjoys just hacking through the numbers to win the system best as possible. Also, my hs fencing teacher went there, awesome place, case western, aside from that new building when the roof gets all iced up.

Peter B Lewis? Yea, Frank Gehry is good at designing buildings that are interesting to look at, but not the most functional.

Yeah, "death from above" through collapsing sheets of ice are things worth avoiding, generally :)

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