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Comment by tacon | Hacker News Reader

In the early 1900s, Harvard was on track to be a Jewish dominated university, and they made the (then common) decision to limit Jewish enrollment.[1] In reading that article, I learned that even Richard Feynman was affected by Columbia's quota, and ended up at MIT instead. (Go MIT!) Non-meritocratic quotas exist to this day at all elite US universities, with one exception: Caltech.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota

[2] http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/12/why_caltech_is_in_a_...

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it's happening today to Asian students in a less overt fashion

I was under the impression UC Berkeley was similar to Caltech in this regard?

It is, but people sometimes don't list it as "elite" because it's a public university.

It is supposed to be, but the administration organized a Massive Resistance campaign against the California Civil Rights Initiative. [0] Through mass 'holistic' review of individual applications for racial background, the University of California follows the same racial quota admission system that nearly all elite American universities do.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_resistance

Not sure what this is in reference to, but as you can see at http://opa.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-fall-enrollment-data, UC Berkeley's freshman enrollment in fall 2015 was about 43% Asian (and, for comparison, 24% white), which does not indicate strong enforcement of racial caps in the manner suggested by tacon.

The analogous numbers for CalTech are 45% Asian and 27% white; see https://www.registrar.caltech.edu/academics/enrollment.

[I take no position in this post on whether the high representation of Asians, low representation of other American racial minorities, and decisions resulting in these outcomes are good or bad things (or deserve the label "meritocratic", or so on). I am simply noting that UC Berkeley seems similar to CalTech in all these regards.]

I know a Jewish family that, in the middle of the 20th century, changed their last name to something not associated with Judaism so that their children could get into college. Imagine having to hide your religion as a way of life, treated by society as if you were hiding a dirty secret.

Thanks for chiming in with this, I did not know Caltech was an academically-uncompromising institution.

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