There’s nothing wrong with Caltech’s admission criteria (engineers and scientists are lovely people! I am one!), but it’s pretty stupid to boil down human ambition and accomplishment to the results of the SAT test.

Cut it to the chase. The ruling class of tomorrow is the current class of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. (And maybe Wharton). The end. The current class wants a ruling class that looks like their idea of utopia. This means a very Kosher group of whites, a hefty dose of divide-and-conquer "diversity", and a minimum of technocrats. Obviously, Asians are left out of that utopia.

They aren't going to spell that out in words, but their actions are clear as damnation.

That said, race-blind admissions policies are not current law nor necessarily even the optimal policy. For example, we can't have a nation with a persistent racial underclass. In as much as college effects class mobility (which is probably small), race-aware policies allow for this.

Why not? As long as the racial underclass remains an underclass due solely to non-discriminatory processes, what's the problem?

A related question: suppose we don't divide humans into subgroups by race, but instead divide them by some other factor. (E.g., height, good looks, intellect, whatever.) Would it be wrong if one of those subdivisions were a "persistent underclass" due solely to a meritocratic process?

Are you asserting that we don't?

For example, are there proportionally more Google employees from Caltech or more startups in YCombinator with Caltech graduates?

I'd bet P[At Google | Caltech degree] is greater than P[At Google | Princeton degree], but it's mostly explained by P[interested in CS | Caltech degree] >> P[interested in CS | Princeton Degree].

In terms of other measures of success, Caltech might lag behind some other schools. As a current CS undergrad, I only know of a handful of startups run by Caltech grads. As I said, this is changing, but it goes to show the impact of choice of metrics.

http://www.harvard.edu/nobel-laureates

http://www.harvard.edu/pulitzer-prize-winners

Since they are all based in California now, I would think yes. But since Larry and Sergey Bin are both from Stanford, I'd expect a disproportionate number of Stanford grads at Google.

In any case, one way universities market themselves is by looking at the average income of their alumni. Since Harvard grads often end up on Wall Street, I would not be surprised if Harvard comes up on top.

But you could argue that's just the financial industry connection. What if you restrict your search on science and engineering majors? Well then we already know MIT and Caltech are better.

Maybe financial industry salaries would change these rankings if they considered averages rather than medians, but a reasonable number of Caltech grads end up on Wall Street as well.