I'm not sure I follow. MIT and Caltech are very niche, but inside that niche, seem to have a pretty clear reputational advantage over Harvard. (Stanford, on the other hand, has some more niche overlap in CS at least.) Sadly, it's not a niche that lends itself to "future President prestige." But is that really hurting either MIT or Caltech, or their grads?

Yeah, and honestly "niche" is a strong word. Sure nobody is going to MIT for theater, but they have a great reputation across most STEM fields as well as in subjects like econ, business, philosophy, etc. When I think of niche I think more of a place like Juliard.

I also think it's even arguable that MIT has more prestige than Harvard - of course this will depend how you're defining prestige, but people definitely assume high intelligence when they hear a student goes to MIT in a way they don't for Harvard. Which I have to imagine is at least somewhat explainable by the admissions differences.

Caltech is a much smaller school and is maybe a better example of a school that's underrated by people who don't know better? But for any reasons that prestige would actually matter I doubt Caltech students have any problems either.

Compared to Stanford and MIT, Caltech is not getting the same caliber student since the late 70s-early 80s (and definitely since the mid 2000s) when looking at international Olympiad winners, etc

> Caltech is not getting the same caliber student since the late 70s-early 80s (and definitely since the mid 2000s)

Citation Needed.

I’m a Caltech alum. It’s common knowledge.

> elite colleges basically have to have positive sentiment. a purely meritocratic admissions process wouldn't be conducive to this, because "rich" people generally do things that increase the sentiment of their schools, like become president or start famous companies.

Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, the LSE, Sciences Pos, X, ÉNA are all counter examples. You can select purely on academics just fine.

I don’t know what you consider academics but I went to a university in your list and they definitely had plenty of things other than what I’d consider academics to select on. Firstly they had basic biographical information (eg your name, which school you went to, I think your age). Secondly they had interviews where they could use whatever impression they liked. Thirdly they had discretion in the offer they made to you (ie “we’ll give you a place if you get these grades”) and discretion in which of the students not meeting their offers they chose to accept (“you didn’t meet your offer but we deliberately give out too many too-difficult offers and we’ve decided we prefer you out of the candidates who didn’t make it”).

Obviously the people involved in the process were generally ethically minded but if this thread shows anything, it’s that two people may do quite different things while each trying to act ethically.