Indeed. Once you factor in the athletes and worse, legacy admits, Ivies have real trouble building an all around good class by the metrics most in this discussion are using (by their metrics, they're education the future leaders of the US and world, so...).

MIT and no doubt CalTech have a great advantage in that the first calculation in admissions is "can they do the work?"; that, which is a rather high bar, plus tremendous self-selection in applicants, results in a somewhat different student body. Or at least compared to nearby Harvard by my observations.