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Comment by mchannon | Hacker News Reader

Given the option as an 18-yo male I’d probably opt for 5% male, but that’s strictly a matter of personal preference, and not a basis for admissions.

I endured 75+% male and didn’t particularly enjoy it, but that’s not why I attended my similarly-sized engineering college. I went for the education and rigor.

Caltech is and has always been about hardcore study. It’s not a cotillion. At least it didn’t used to be.

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You don't need to sacrifice the rigor to have a more balanced community, at least not at the total size Caltech is. There's a large component of college admissions these days that is somewhat arbitrary. High school resumes (at least the type that applies to these schools) have become absolutely cracked. Like it used to mean something to have a research internship, now it's weird not to.

I think you do need to sacrifice some rigor to reach a level of perfect balance, or at least sacrifice the appearance of rigor. So let's agree to differ on that one.

I think we would agree about most aspects of college admissions being flawed.

Flawed is probably technically correct. But you're basically optimizing for a good blend of student body and I think admission committees don't get things "right" but who knows what that even means? They probably mostly do well enough given there are lots of opinions on what the targets should be.

It's pretty clear to me that you don't want to just admit the highest SAT scores, the best athletes, or the best musicians (unless maybe you're Juilliard).

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