Unlike their counterparts at other universities, Caltech's president and development staff don't prod the admissions office to lower standards for children of prospective donors. Of Caltech's fifty-four trustees, including many of its biggest benefactors, only two have children who went to Caltech. Despite being a short drive away, Caltech isn't on the Hollywood map; most children of movie stars and moguls don't want to work that hard. They'd rather spend four years in Providence, Rhode Island, coasting through Brown's anything-goes curriculum, than stay in sunny California and endure Caltech's five required semesters of math and physics.

  Athletic prowess doesn't count for much in Caltech admissions either. Its squads adhere to the amateur ideal: any student who wants to can play. Caltech doesn't even field intercollegiate teams in upper-crust sports such as crew, squash, sailing, and horseback riding.

  Caltech does have a tuition benefit package for employee dependents—free tuition at the institute, 50 percent paid elsewhere. Yet, despite the significant financial incentive, Caltech faculty rarely lobby for their children, nor does the admissions office favor them. For instance, Cross's son, an outstanding student, applied early to Caltech but was deferred to the regular pool and enrolled instead at MIT, Caltech's archrival.

  “Obviously, there isn't any strong preference for faculty children, since he didn't get in,” said the physicist. “I wasn't disappointed. I wasn't sure Caltech was the right place for him.”

  Another physicist on the freshman admissions committee, Robert McKeown, told me that he wasn't encouraging his daughter to apply to Caltech, despite the potential tuition savings. “She's a very good math and science student, but she doesn't have the passion or drive in science or math that we look for,” McKeown said of his daughter, with an objectivity that was almost scary. “She's just below the cut for admissions at Caltech.”

  Without underperforming rich kids dragging down the overall quality, Caltech each year enrolls an outstanding freshman class; the average SAT score of entering students in 2003 was 1505, including a remarkable 775 in math, just 25 points below the maximum. Moreover, instead of perpetuating aristocracy, Caltech exposes promising youngsters from working-class and immigrant families to the best scientific education, preparing them for research careers. About 85 percent of Caltech students graduated from public high schools, 60 percent receive financial aid—as against the 40-45 percent typical of the Ivy League—and fully one-quarter speak a language other than English at home.

  Ben Golub's parents, both computer programmers, emigrated to the United States from Russia when he was seven. As a scholarship student at a private high school in New Jersey, he quickly exhausted its math offerings. In his senior year, he studied math at Princeton, where he disliked what he perceived as students” preoccupation with money and political connections. He noticed that wealthy undergraduates flocked to easy majors “where you don't need a lot of raw intellectual power to get by with a decent GPA. I don't know many obscenely rich people who want to be scientists or engineers or physicists. They want to be businessmen or bankers. The academic world is so tough.”

  Nobody ever accused Ben of lacking intellectual power. The high school valedictorian with the 1590 SAT score chose Caltech over Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford. As a sophomore in 2004, with an almost perfect 3.9 grade point average, he was named by the student government to the Caltech freshman admissions committee, where he joined admissions staff and eminent faculty in evaluating candidates. “Anyone who tried to use wealth and pull strings at Caltech would be laughed out of the room,” he said. “It's how smart you are that counts.”

  JUST AS Copernicus disproved the medieval notion that the sun revolves around the earth, Caltech disproves the modern dogma that the survival of private higher education revolves around admissions breaks for the rich. Administrators at other great private universities often concede privately that lowering standards for alumni and donor children seems inappropriate and even undemocratic. But they contend that a private institution can't risk alienating a wealthy alumnus by rejecting his son or daughter any more than a public university can afford to antagonize the chairman of the legislative committee that supplies its state funding. If these preferences were ever curtailed, the argument goes, gifts to private education would dwindle, class sizes would grow and laboratories crumble, and scholarships for needy students would dry up.

  In fact, Caltech is one of three prestigious private colleges—the other two are the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City and Berea College in Berea, Kentucky—that flourish without preferences for upper-class students, be they alumni children or polo players. They don't have development lists, country club sports, or vigorous fund-raising operations targeting well-off parents of newly admitted students. Nor do they have socially exclusive clubs or fraternities that encourage wealthy students to segregate themselves from the hoi polloi.

  Instead, this trio judges applicants based on merit while taking into account socioeconomic disadvantages—such as coming from a single-parent family or attending an inner-city high school offering few advanced courses—that might have limited the candidates” accomplishments but not their potential. As a result, all three enroll lots of low-income students, unlikely fodder for future fund-raising appeals. More than 80 percent of Berea's student body qualifies for Pell grants—the federal financial aid program with the strictest income limits.

  Despite such seemingly self-destructive policies, Caltech, Berea, and Cooper Union attract enough gifts to maintain academic excellence and meet students” financial need. Tuition for all students at Berea and Cooper Union is free, while Caltech keeps its tuition, $25,335 in 2004-5, about 15 percent below other top universities. To boost resources, all three schools are pursuing ambitious fund-raising campaigns. Their experience shows that while it's easier to attract rich givers and build an endowment by compromising admissions, there are other means toward the same ends. It is possible to be both need-blind and wealth-blind.

  Caltech, Berea, and Cooper Union differ widely in their locales, histories, and curricula. But an examination of them reveals certain common traits that help them safeguard the integrity of their admissions process and the quality of their student bodies while still persuading donors to pony up. These characteristics suggest an alternative model for colleges that want a cleaner admissions system but fear the fiscal consequences. Similarities include:

  1. Small size. Caltech has only about 900 undergraduates; Cooper Union, 950; Berea, 1,550. Just as it's harder for a fugitive to disappear in a village than a metropolis, so it's harder for an underqualified student to hide on a small campus than a large one. Scarcity makes each slot in the freshman class more precious; the students all know each other, and the professors all know them too. Moreover, small enrollments mean a limited curricu lum and fewer “gut” majors and courses.

  Small institutions are also less likely to have graduate schools in business and law, which often yield rich alumni with few qualms about pressuring the undergraduate admissions office. Business and law schools “create people who are good at using influence,” said Caltech admissions director Richard Bischoff.

  2. Branding. Caltech, Cooper Union, and Berea not only eschew legacy preference but also, due to their small size, have relatively few alumni. For tunately, these three schools aren't just special places to their own gradu ates. They have developed distinctive identities and reputations that appeal to other potential funders—philanthropists, charities, and the federal government.

  Caltech is synonymous with excellence in scientific research; its alumni and faculty, including such seminal thinkers as Linus Pauling and Richard Feynman, have won thirty Nobel Prizes. The Richter scale, used to measure earthquakes, was developed at Caltech.

  One dean at an elite university described the difference between fund-raising for Caltech and for the Ivy League. If an Ivy League university is seeking money from a corporation, this person said, “The first thing they say is, ‘Who is an alum in that company?” Then they go see the alum and say, ‘You had a great time as an undergraduate, wouldn't you want to make that possible for somebody else?’” Whereas the Caltech pitch, he said, is “We have the best program. If you support us, you'll help science and national prosperity.”

  Businessman and Caltech trustee Wally Weisman, who is heading the institute's current fund-raising campaign, graduated from Stanford, as did his three children. John Diekman, a successful venture capitalist, is neither a Caltech graduate nor a prospective parent; he has degrees from Princeton and Stanford and is childless. Yet in 2004, he joined the institute's board, which normally entails a significant donation. “I always admired Caltech,” he told me. “It's the absolute cream of the crop when it comes to science and engineering. The horsepower of its kids is just extraordinary. I couldn't have gotten in.”

  Renowned nationally for its programs in art, architecture, and engineering, Cooper Union is also a uniquely New York City institution—a niche likely to impress philanthropists there. New York's skyline and image owe much to Cooper Union alumni such as Milton Glaser, who created the “I NY” logo for the famous advertising campaign, and architect Daniel Libeskind, who won the competition to redesign the World Trade Center site after the September 11,2001, attacks. “There was a time when virtually every city agency that had anything to do with technology was headed by a Cooper engineering graduate,” said Cooper Union president George Campbell. Berea College has accumulated a startlingly large endowment by promoting its progressive history—founded by an abolitionist minister, it was the South's first interracial, coeducational college—and its mission of educating and uplifting impoverished Appalachian families.

  3. Faculty involvement in admissions decisions. At most universities, fac ulty broadly oversee undergraduate admissions, but they leave reading ap plications and sifting the wheat from the chaff to professional admissions staff. At Caltech, though, admissions staff, students, and faculty—including 2004 Nobel Prize winner H. David Politzer—hash out admissions deci sions together; no freshman is admitted without at least one professor reading and commenting on his or her file. At Cooper Union, nine profes sors look over each portfolio submitted by an applicant to the art program, and two faculty members review each would-be architect.

  Faculty participation hinders wealth from intruding on the admissions process. Having risen to their lofty status on their own merit (or so most of them believe), faculty vigorously uphold academic standards in admissions, as long as they aren't pushing their own children. Protected by lifetime job tenure, they're in a stronger position than admissions staff to withstand pressure from the development office or president. Also, while admissions staff are conversant with class ranks and test scores, faculty members are better qualified to judge subjective criteria such as student essays, research projects, and recommendations.

  “I don't think faculty would take well to having any pressure put on them by wealthy parents,” said Hugh Taylor, emeritus professor of geology, who chaired Caltech's freshman admissions committee in 2004-5.

  4. Creative fund-raising. Colleges that don't accommodate donors via admissions preferences have to compensate with other rewards. Gordon Moore, cofounder of computer chipmaker Intel, earned his doctorate at Caltech amid what he called a “fantastic intellectual climate.” Although their two sons did not attend Caltech—one went to San Jose State, the other to the University of Santa Clara—Moore and his wife in 2001 pledged $600 million to the institute, the largest gift in the history of higher education. Instead of an admissions quid pro quo, Caltech thanked him with a rare honor: it named an asteroid after him: 8013 gordonmoore.

  Moore was touched. Caltech “presented me with a neat framed picture showing the discovery photo,” he emailed me. “It is not a very bright object—none of the new asteroids are—but it is an unusual recognition. … At least it will not hit the earth in the next several million years.”

  Caltech also arranges for donors who endow scholarships to have lunch on campus with the recipients, so they can take pleasure in learning firsthand how much their generosity helps students. Because Caltech's science whizzes are often shy and socially awkward, they're carefully coached before these lunches to use the correct cutlery and to express their appreciation.

  Berea takes this approach even further—it sends students on the road with fund-raisers. For the final week of a course on philanthropy and vol-unteerism, students travel nationwide to meet donors—including many nonalumni who have never set foot on the Berea campus—and assure them that the college is still committed to helping the underprivileged.

  One such student, Melvin Cowan, was raised in Lexington, Kentucky, by his mother, an off-and-on restaurant cook who earned less than $10,000 a year. Growing up, Melvin said, he was a “problem child” who “should have been a statistic. I should have been in the penitentiary. If you'd have told me when I was twelve or thirteen that I'd go to college, I'd laugh in your face.” A Lexington community center changed his outlook by introducing him to art and dance. Then, after his freshman year of high school, the African American teen from the city found himself on a bus to rural Berea to attend a summer program for disadvantaged youth.

  “I remember my first time coming to Berea for Upward Bound,” he said. “I wondered, ‘Where are they taking me?” All I saw was grass. I didn't see any malls, any restaurants.” He came to enjoy the campus so much that he returned the next three summers and then enrolled at Berea College. A communications major, Melvin participates in a wide variety of community service programs. He coaches a dance team composed of nine middle school students with special needs, is establishing a Berea student association to teach at-risk youth about higher education, and has written a forty-page manifesto titled “A Young Social Revolutionist's Guide to Self-Awareness and Social Action.”

  In January 2005, Melvin traveled to Florida with a member of Berea's development staff and told his story to a dozen donors. “I satisfied any questions donors might have about what's going on at the college, what are students like, what their money is being used for,” he said. “We talked to people who have never seen the campus in their life and are major givers to the college. They love the college's mission. They love what it stands for. That's why they donate heavily.” Melvin, who intends to go into business for himself, said he won't neglect the college, even if he becomes too rich for his children to enroll: “I will donate to Berea. I want to have at least several scholarships in my name.”

  COOPER UNION has few alumni more devoted than Marilyn Hoffner and Albert Greenberg. The couple, both graphic designers, have both served as president of Cooper's alumni association. Hoffner worked at Cooper for twenty-four years, heading its fund-raising and alumni offices. Her husband was on the board of trustees and listed himself in the Manhattan phone book as Albert “CU” Greenberg. Their license plate is CU1948, memorializing the year they graduated. They named their only son Peter Cooper Greenberg, after the industrialist and inventor who established Cooper Union in 1858 in the belief that education should be as free as air and water. The younger Greenberg was “interested in architecture from the minute he was born,” his mother said. An excellent student at a New York City prep school, he applied in 1980 to an array of colleges with premier architecture programs and enrolled at Yale, where he would graduate with distinction in that field before studying at Harvard.

  Cooper Union turned him down. His mother said a dean told her that his drawings weren't quite good enough. The rejection disappointed his parents, but it didn't shake their loyalty to their alma mater. If anything, they were proud that Cooper held Peter to the same rigorous standards as every other applicant. “When other alums call and say, ‘Help me get our kid into Cooper,” we have a good answer,” Hoffner said. “We didn't interfere with the process, and there's nothing you can do anyway. I don't think you can get anybody in.”

  Based in an eight-story brownstone overlooking the Bowery in Lower Manhattan, Cooper spurns a lot of top-notch students. One of the most selective schools in the country, it accepts only 12 percent of candidates, about the same proportion as Stanford and Yale. Being New York City's preeminent art school, it sees a lot of well-connected applicants, but it pays little deference to wealth and celebrity. Preference for the privileged “could play, if we let it, a major role, especially with politicians and donors and people like that who would expect something in return for their generosity,” longtime admissions dean Richard Bory told me a few months before he retired in July 2005. “That's one of the reasons we're so negative about any kind of legacy.”

  If an applicant cited a relationship to an alumnus or prospective donor, Bory said, Cooper's admissions staff would ask for a letter directly to the dean disclosing the tie. In a typical year, about 10 percent of applicants have letters sent on their behalf from people with presumed clout— Bory recalled a recommendation from movie stars Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. Bory then tracked those students—not to give them an edge, but to make sure he could defend an adverse decision.

  “I like to be informed,” Bory said. “In case somebody asks me, ‘Why didn't my kid get in? I was going to give $20 million,” I can say, ‘If you take a look, his SAT II is a little low’” In eighteen years as admissions dean, he added, he's received only three or four phone calls asking why a student was rejected. “Some of the most prominent New Yorkers” children and grandchildren have not been admitted to Cooper,” he said. “They all accept the fact. We don't get the pressure. If you had to use the word pure, this is probably a very pure admissions process and an extremely egalitarian one.”

  While rebuffing many a well-connected applicant, Cooper Union beckons to talented newcomers. According to Bory, 35 to 40 percent of Cooper students weren't born in the United States and 27 percent are Asian American. Then there's Erik Pye, born and raised in Austin, Texas. Family upheaval left him a high school dropout and homeless at the age of sixteen, sleeping in half-constructed strip malls and on the roofs of parking garages. But he always knew he'd be an artist, ever since as a three-year-old he spilled baby powder to illustrate snowfall and painted walls with his mother's nail polish. “When I was homeless in Austin, I used to sit in Denny's with a cup of coffee and draw all night,” he said. Occasionally, he silkscreened T-shirts and sold them to pay for food.