Many Caltech freshmen got a perfect 800 on their math SAT, while a near-perfect 1560 combination score placed an incoming freshmen at only the 75th percentile of his entering classmates.One of the most interesting things I heard in my first day at orientation at Carnegie Mellon was CMU's president talking about all the students they rejected- xx perfect SAT scores, xxx students with a 4.0, xx valedictorians, etc. In other words, CMU's perspective is that someone purely interested in academics (and nothing else) isn't as strong of an asset. I think it made for a more fulfilling academic atmosphere for the entire student body.
What this means is that at Caltech, there are no dumb jocks, dumb legacies, or dumb affirmative action students.
I kind of think that's weird too (besides the offensive nature of those words). Carnegie Mellon has a reputation for being an absurdly nerdy school, but along with Computer Science it also top business schools, drama schools, and art schools. That is a weird-ass cross section of human. There's plenty of areas that CMU may lack compared to other top schools, but I think having a broad, diverse student body is one of its strongest assets.
That said, I'm trying not to translate much to Caltech itself from this article since this cat sounds kind of crazy.
One of the most interesting things I heard in my first day at orientation at Carnegie Mellon was CMU's president talking about all the students they rejected- xx perfect SAT scores, xxx students with a 4.0, xx valedictorians, etc. In other words, CMU's perspective is that someone purely interested in academics (and nothing else) isn't as strong of an asset. I think it made for a more fulfilling academic atmosphere for the entire student body.
What this means is that at Caltech, there are no dumb jocks, dumb legacies, or dumb affirmative action students.
I kind of think that's weird too (besides the offensive nature of those words). Carnegie Mellon has a reputation for being an absurdly nerdy school, but along with Computer Science it also top business schools, drama schools, and art schools. That is a weird-ass cross section of human. There's plenty of areas that CMU may lack compared to other top schools, but I think having a broad, diverse student body is one of its strongest assets.
That said, I'm trying not to translate much to Caltech itself from this article since this cat sounds kind of crazy.