From an article in today’s New York Times on college admissions:
But with more and more students filling out ever more applications, schools like the California Institute of Technology received a record number of applications this year — 3,595, or 8 percent more than last year — and admitted 576 students. Among so many talented applicants, a prospective student with perfect SAT scores was not unusual, said Jill Perry, a Caltech spokeswoman.
“The successful students have to have shown some passion for science and technology in high school or their personal life,” Ms. Perry said. “That means creating a computer system for your high school, or taking a tractor apart and putting it back together.”
I’m imagining a box on the Caltech application which says “Check here if you have ever taken a tractor apart and put it back together.” 🙂
Wow. I can actually check that box. I saw it as more of a liberal arts skill, though…
Caltech is a liberal arts school for the sciences 😉
Anyone else, I might argue with on that one. But not you.
Anyway, the density of grammar errors in those two sentences (?) reduces my liberal arts credibility to squilch (a.k.a exp(-1/zilch) ).
That is an awesome attitude for a university to have.
Note that perfect SAT scores ain’t what they used to be. Not that I’m bitter.
One of the beauties of Caltech was that the SAT didn’t seem to matter so much if you exceeded some reasonable threshold. There was one guy in my class with a perfect SAT score (1600 at the time) that I knew about. Everyone he talked to knew about it, too.
He left before freshman year was over.
My take away lesson from watching that happen: the SAT measured very little that was of relevance to success at Caltech. With all the changes in Caltech’s curriculum in the last 12 years, I’m sure that much has held true…