<p>My 15 y/o son has expressed interest because some of his chess buddies are there now. As designated payer, I have a couple of questions.</p>
<p>How much political correctness is there at CalTech? </p>
<p>Do non-technical courses follow the liberal arts tradition or are they more like indoctrination sessions? </p>
<p>Is Western Civilization considered a positive development in the history of humanity?</p>
<h2>Is free speech valued at CalTech or do you have speech codes and sensitivity training for making someone uncomfortable?</h2>
<p>On another note;</p>
<p>He is taking vector calc and quantum mechanics right now at University of Iowa. I thought this was impressive until I read about all the math courses other posters on this board have taken. Should he be pushing harder? He's junior right now and has this semester and 3 more to take college courses before he graduates.</p>
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How much political correctness is there at CalTech?
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</p>
<p>Less than at peer universities, since math/science types tend to have "no-nonsense" personalities -- Richard Feynman is the paradigm case. Most people at Caltech dislike affirmative action and wish things like that could be discussed more straightforwardly.</p>
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Do non-technical courses follow the liberal arts tradition or are they more like indoctrination sessions?
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</p>
<p>They're pretty open and free-flowing; Caltech students are too smart to tolerate being told what to think. That's not to say professors are meek with their opinions. They're not, and neither are students. Dogmas of all kinds are looked down upon. So someone who has a rigid religious dogma of some kind might find some of the humanities courses insufficiently tolerant. But most students would say the opposite -- that everything is discussed and put to the test, and nothing, including old religious beliefs, is accepted just because it's "an opinion that we should respect." </p>
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Is Western Civilization considered a positive development in the history of humanity?
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<p>Strictly speaking, it's not the function of a university as a whole to decide whether a historical event was positive or negative. Since Caltech is a scientific institution, its work owes a lot to the Renaissance and the scientific revolution, and so most students and professors would probably say western civilization is a positive development. Cultural studies of a European-bashing sort aren't practiced here. (But rumors of that sort of thing taking over academia are vastly exaggerated, so this question is a little amusing. You'd have to look pretty hard to find a university where western civilization is actaully looked down upon.)</p>
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Is free speech valued at CalTech or do you have speech codes and sensitivity training for making someone uncomfortable?
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Students really wouldn't stand for it, so no, there aren't any speech codes. Since Caltech is small, I think we have to deal with less of that nonsense than some of our peer schools.</p>
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He is taking vector calc and quantum mechanics right now at University of Iowa. I thought this was impressive until I read about all the math courses other posters on this board have taken. Should he be pushing harder? He's junior right now and has this semester and 3 more to take college courses before he graduates.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Nope, what he's taking now is fine. Quantum mechanics is rarer than advanced math courses, so he'll stand out. If he's a junior now, he'll have some sophisticated courses by the time he finishes. I think he's probably in fine shape.</p>