I do think it's true that Caltech students are all very passionate about STEM, so the average family wealth is less apparent.
Keep in mind that I attended in the 70s. Nothing stays the same. I have little idea if Caltech is the same today as then, and rather doubt it. One obvious change is their mission statement has changed drastically. In the 1978 "Caltech Information for Students" pg 105 it says simply:
> The primary purpose of the undergraduate school of the California Institute of Technology, as stated by the Trustees, is "to provide a collegiate education which will best train the creative type of scientist or engineer so urgently needed in our educational, governmental, and industrial development."
Late 60s, Page, for me. I was lower middle class, which seemed to be the great majority. I recall only one House contemporary who was from serious wealth. Would never have known but for developing a friendship. As you say, I doubt things are similar today.
Ideally, the people of the future will have progressed beyond the relative savagery of me and my peers and look upon us with disdain. Perhaps for how much I enjoy a good steak, or for the genital mutilation of our boys.
I can celebrate George Washington as a founder of the country and also understand he was a slave owner.
It turns out even Gandi, Mother Theresa, etc had a pretty sketchy side, because shocker no human actually meets that bar. But since we're categorically unable to say someone did a great thing while actually being pretty immoral by that's standards, the only options that the university seem to have available to it are entirely condoning their unacceptable side or else disowning them.
I'm not saying there couldn't be I don't know, a pet owner who took them in off the street or from a shelter, nursed them back to health, and are lifetime companions in a consensual idealised relationship, with the ownership mostly being a legal technicality. Yet there is an ethically dubious side to pet ownership which I could imagine getting the entire institution framed in a negative light in the distant future.
I imagine in the year 3000 there might be a future where schoolchildren will be shown holograms of rendering plants and told by the teacher "And this is what they fed the animals" and then a Labrador Retriever will have an AI write an essay which states that "the ownership or consumption of any animals, is fundamentally a crime against animal rights".
And yes. I think slaving/caging an animal is brutal. But many animals will happily have your company.
I was visiting Bay Area a year before COVID and stopped by in Berkeley for something, iirc was getting brunch with friends. The first thing I see after parking is a full street closure and a large crowd that looked like it was marching down the street, with people holding banners, drumming, chanting slogans, etc.
Out of curiosity, I decided to check what it was about. As you have probably guessed by now, "pet ownership is slavery" was the theme (one of the banners in the front was saying exactly that).
I guess all of human civilization has just been a giant failure. The only chance we have is for us poor wretches to retroactively flagellate our ancestors and beg forgiveness from the gods of modern enlightenment, complete with the knowledge that we too will be flagellated in our own due time, and rightfully abhorred in the judgement of future generations, no matter our worldly achievements.
For all its supposed enlightenment, modern political correctness is really more akin to medieval Catholicism
Yes, I even consider the Nazis terrible people no matter how widespread antisemitism was at the time and no matter how much public support they had. I have that view simultaneously with the understanding that there is no German my age who engaged in any of that.
There is nothing wrong with understanding and making moral judgements about people. I can look at a painting in a museum that has someone enslaved in the picture and both understand the context and be repulsed by the depiction.
It's proper for people to make moral judgements, and to understand both past injustices and contemporary injustices that one implicitly (one hopes not explicitly!) supports.
The real issue here is it’s hard to revise such emotionally charged views in light of new information. Condemn people for murder and it will be harder for you to notice the innocent person on death row.
Worse, many people will try and influence your opinion via misinformation. Condemnation short circuits peoples ability for rational though and that’s exactly how normal people end up committing atrocities.
The uncomfortable truth is that any of us, genetically unchanged but raised in post WWI Germany would most likely be Nazis during WWII.
But of course: isn't that the important lesson? Most, but not all were; so is this knowledge an excuse to do nothing or is it a spur to look for the injustices one accepts today, and change one's position?
Beware anybody or anyone who seeks to erase the messiness and complexity of life. The pursuit of purity is the root of so much evilness. If you uncover the sordid past of a public figure, the right thing to do is exhibit that history alongside the better things they're known for, so that people learn and remember what real people look like; that nobody is a caricature; and that to avoid repeating the sins of history we must appreciate what we share with those who have committed those sins previously.
Even in the 1990s, a CS program was easy to get into and a local 4 year degree was sufficient for most lines of work.
A friend of mine dropped out of Caltech after a couple years, and disappeared. I ran into him many years later, and we did some catching up. 10 years after dropping out, he asked Caltech if he could come back and try again. They said sure (one of the nice things about Caltech's philosophy). He got straight A's. I asked him if he had gotten any smarter, he said no, he was just willing to work the second time around.
Of course, there were some students who just effortlessly aced everything. Hal Finney (yes, that Hal) was one of them. Being around people like that was just amazing.
RIP. He probably say the same about you
I think this is true for a lot of engineering schools. Maybe there just isn't as much of a demand to go to the pure STEM schools as there is the schools that have everything. Like I remember looking at requirements for Rutgers at the same time and essentially they had like a 3.2 (or maybe 3.4 GPA) minimum and you'd have to re-take all the core CS classes as they would not accept those classes from community college.
For someone like me, who believed they could do it, but didn't have the "perfect" admissions packet (moving to the US midway through high school with very poor english and zero knowledge of how the US education/admission systems work will do that), it was the chance I needed, and I am immensely grateful for it.
I’m sure it’s still true today. Still, the incentive to game and coach through admissions is intense because of the potential rewards.
I went to my local 4 year which was nearly free, and I coasted through the CS program making it possible to do other things.
Still, my earnings were halved because of the lower quality of the CS program and I do wonder about the road not taken.
I think it’s even more intense for students today; but it’s also true that the quality of student hasn’t gone up.
> There are a lot of rich kids at the school
They must have hid it well, because I didn't notice any. I never heard anyone mention skiing in Aspen. Nobody had even an upper class car. Nobody had an expensively outfitted dorm room.
As for me, I come from a lower middle class family, and managed to get a modest loan in aid, which I paid off after graduation.
But the insiders can clearly tell you're not one of them.
However, the signals are more subtle than you think. Things like being happy to go out to eat on weekends, having a big wardrobe, having technical toys, and having a car (at all) were all signs of wealth. A few particular sports were also indicators. "Rich people cars" are usually not given to kids in their 20's, even by wealthy parents.
More subtly, there are a lot of social things, like asking what your parents do and asking about your last vacation. Most rich kids know how to read the room enough not to brag about expensive vacations directly, but will ask assuming you recently had one. Having parents who fly in for things and flying out for short vacations is a dead giveaway.
Also, at Caltech in particular, being well-read was a sign of wealth, but I assume that doesn't translate to non-science schools.
And it would never come up in rotation, but certain house cultures just are more attractive to certain types of people. I think that's the source of the disparity, not any sort of rotation-related thing.
I was well-read, at least in the field of scifi books!
I don't recall anyone's parents flying in or them flying out for vacations. You might see them dropping their kid off at the beginning of the year, or picking them up at the end.
I eventually got a car for my senior year, but it was my beater Mustang from high school I'd rescued from oblivion.
But, just because I didn't notice these things, doesn't mean they weren't there.