my best friend is a PHD in physics from MIT. now he interviews people for admissions. last year i tried to tell him MIT treated people different depending on their race. he swore they did not.

this does not look good for his side of the story!

As a Caltech alum I'm pleased they have stayed out of this. Caltech's entering freshman class is only 260 people, so unlike larger schools like MIT and Stanford they can't squander places on people who are not qualified, regardless of their race or anything else. How can "race-conscious admissions policies" be considered anything but racist?

It is also notable that the grade inflation infecting The Ivies has not hit Caltech; a B is still good and an A is still rare.

i had a physics professor who was a grad student @ Caltech, he joked that the curves were like this:

a small spike for A's (mostly undergraduates), a larger hump for B's (mostly graduate students) and the largest humps for C's (mostly undergraduates).

Cal Tech is still one of the few universities that actually considers use of standardized tests for admissions to be legitimate.

And, if diversity were such a good idea, how does one explain away the fact that monoracial countries such as Iceland, Taiwan, and Japan are all First World, yet Guatemala, which is about 90% Mayan, is not?

Razib - didn't have link, but the MIT press release, actually a quite interesting read, is
here

In the above press release, Chuck Vest, our fearless leader, makes the following statements...

Vest said he hoped the brief would “help persuade the Justices of the Supreme Court that for the good of America, our colleges and universities must retain the freedom to consider race as one of many factors when admitting students.”

And I thought the ability to discrminate on the basis of race was one of the few "freedom" our public insititution explicitly did not have. But maybe I'm one of those scientists who can't
read so good :)

And I am sure Vest's comments on diversity at MIT, and we do have a lot, will suprise GNXP readers...

“But that is just the point. It is not a miracle. It is not a natural occurrence. It is the result of determined, conscientious effort, over more than three decades, often against seemingly insurmountable odds. It is the result of institutional leadership and occasional courage. It is a result of the determination of innumerable families and communities. The goal was as simple as it was profound: to give every young person the opportunity to succeed.

And hopefully it still is the goal. I also feel bad for all the people who have not attended law school, grad school, or a prestigious undergraduate school, and thus have not had the opportunity to succeed, hence by assumption have not succeeded, and hence are faliures. QED

MIT is actually very diverse place, the best
snippet I could find stated:

In 2002–2003, MIT students come from al 50 states, the District of Columbia, and four territories. The Institute's international student population comprises 344 undergraduates (8 percent) and 2,283 graduate students (37 percent) from 108 foreign countries.

AND FYI, if you do the math, MIT is about 25%
foreign, ~30% asian (~12/18 - foreign,native)
but of course the foreign asians don;t count as minorities...