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The comparison between Caltech and the Ivies is a bit unfair. Caltech is in California, which has more Asians, and people tend to attend schools near home. Addi

by natrius 14y ago

The comparison between Caltech and the Ivies is a bit unfair. Caltech is in California, which has more Asians, and people tend to attend schools near home. Adding in Stanford would be illustrative.

roguecoder 14y ago
This turns out to explain most of the "overrepresentation" of jewish students as well: there are lots of highly-ranked universities around NYC and Boston.
- fyi80 14y ago
  The geography imbalance, which exists, is not even close to explaining the disparity between general population and Ivy League attendees.
cube13 14y ago
Yup, I'd like to see Stanford as well. I'd also like to see what the breakdown for asians that are US citizens versus foreign nationals or immigrants. The other problem is that this article automatically assumes that private schools are "elite", and public schools aren't. That's true for certain fields-law and finance, for example, are dominated by the ivy league schools. STEM, on the other hand, is a much more even distribution. Many of the engineering programs at most of the Big 10 state schools are considered to be some of the best educations you can get, and the UC system is full of very good programs. UIUC's CS program is considered one of the best in the nation, as are Purdue's ME and aeronautical engineering programs.
- natrius 14y ago
  As far as public schools go, the article only excludes the UCs because they can't consider race. In fact, it uses Berkeley as a peer for the elite private schools. There's no other public school that has a reputation across all disciplines similar to the elite private schools, so I don't think the article made any real oversight. There are many programs within public schools that are considered peers, though.
  - wildgift 14y ago
    I thought UMich was considered very good too.
tzs 14y ago
Stanford's undergraduate student body is 23% Asian, which is just above the Ivies. Stanford is 41% from California. Caltech is 32% from California. Thus, it looks like the California factor has little if anything to do with the Caltech vs. the Ivies Asian data.

by natrius 14y ago

The comparison between Caltech and the Ivies is a bit unfair. Caltech is in California, which has more Asians, and people tend to attend schools near home. Adding in Stanford would be illustrative.

roguecoder 14y ago

This turns out to explain most of the "overrepresentation" of jewish students as well: there are lots of highly-ranked universities around NYC and Boston.

fyi80 14y ago
The geography imbalance, which exists, is not even close to explaining the disparity between general population and Ivy League attendees.

cube13 14y ago

Yup, I'd like to see Stanford as well. I'd also like to see what the breakdown for asians that are US citizens versus foreign nationals or immigrants. The other problem is that this article automatically assumes that private schools are "elite", and public schools aren't. That's true for certain fields-law and finance, for example, are dominated by the ivy league schools. STEM, on the other hand, is a much more even distribution. Many of the engineering programs at most of the Big 10 state schools are considered to be some of the best educations you can get, and the UC system is full of very good programs. UIUC's CS program is considered one of the best in the nation, as are Purdue's ME and aeronautical engineering programs.

natrius 14y ago
As far as public schools go, the article only excludes the UCs because they can't consider race. In fact, it uses Berkeley as a peer for the elite private schools. There's no other public school that has a reputation across all disciplines similar to the elite private schools, so I don't think the article made any real oversight. There are many programs within public schools that are considered peers, though.
- wildgift 14y ago
  I thought UMich was considered very good too.

tzs 14y ago

Stanford's undergraduate student body is 23% Asian, which is just above the Ivies. Stanford is 41% from California. Caltech is 32% from California. Thus, it looks like the California factor has little if anything to do with the Caltech vs. the Ivies Asian data.