[cycrutchfield]

There may be some geographic bias there because California’s Asian population is much higher than the US as a whole.

[pc86]

I would be interested to see if there is any bias toward state of residence for a school as widely known and respected as CalTech.

[extra88]

Of course there is. Harvard has a disproportionate number of students from New England, and more specifically Massachusetts, as well. Plenty of smart kids don't want to be too far from home or travel a long way to an unfamiliar environment.

As for CalTech's rep, I'm just one person on the East Coast and wasn't a Tech-type student but I forget it exists all the time. If someone asked me to name a West Coast school to compare to MIT, "Stanford" would be all I could think of.