<p>I have noticed that whenever people talk about engineering schools, people always refer to Berkeley and MIT and Stanford. Sometimes CMU when talking about computer science schools. Rarely do people mention of Caltech, and few people seem to be very familiar with it. </p>
<p>But on almost every university ranking charts, Caltech places at the very top (US News placed it 4th I think). Yet more people are familiar with UCLA and other "lower ranking schools" than Caltech. </p>
<p>Not that I'm solely into the prestegious aspect of a university --- I really am not --- I'm just curious as to why this is so.</p>
<p>really small enrollment.</p>
<p>^
Dartmouth has really small enrollment too, but its pretty well known.</p>
<p>datmouth offers more of a liberal arts education than anything, which relates more to the general population. I would think that a smaller % of the population is concerned with prestigious tech/engineering/science schools. Just a guess though.</p>
<p>Really small enrollment--approx. 900 undergrads total--and very high admission requirements--average SAT I score is over 1500/1600.</p>
<p>@ quantize
Hmm I see. I understand about your Dartmouth arguement. </p>
<p>I mean, MIT is very well known and Caltech is apparantly seen as its "rival."
I was thinking Caltech should be as reknown as MIT. But yeah, the small enrollment seems to be the culprit . . . has Caltech ever thought of expanding its class size? Or were there issues with money?</p>
<p>In academia, Caltech is as renowned as MIT, if not more. Obviously, you could quibble over individual majors, and slight differences in philosophy. The real question is, why do we care if most people aren't as familiar with us as other schools? As long as employers have know who we are, and grad schools know who we are, it doesn't really matter if Joe the Plumber doesn't. I would prefer not to be judged by where I went to school, but by my knowledge and performance anyway.</p>
<p>Drastically expanding the class size would kind of defeat the purpose of a small, research oriented environment, though I've heard rumors and talks of renovating the North Houses, such that they may be able to slightly expand the class size (I'll make up a number and say by like 50). I don't think the issue is entirely money, but one of priority.</p>
<p>A lot of it is PR related. MIT is much, much, much better connected to popular media than Caltech is. In my field, nanofabrication, I often read about stuff MIT has done and think "wow, we're doing something else that is so much more awesome" but despite that fact never see it in the popular press. I think Caltech has never been as interested in promoting itself as MIT has been (and it's harder, because we are a lot smaller than MIT) because "we're good and that should be good enough". I personally think we should be spending a lot more money on PR, but that's just my opinion.</p>
<p>There's the additional fact that MIT tends to have a lot more going on in the practical side of things, mostly due to its Media Lab (MIT's blend of science and design). People for the most part don't want to read about research, they want to read about products. Despite the fact that (in my opinion) MIT's most interesting and important contributions are through research, you hear a lot more about the media lab stuff (like the "$100" laptop). Caltech does not have an equivalent facility to the media lab.</p>
<p>EDIT: We don't want to expand our class size greatly. We'd either have to lose selectivity or, like MIT, lose our focus by changing the school to be more of a liberal arts oriented environment. What we do need is better PR.</p>
<p>Just curious
What would you hope the better PR would get Caltech?</p>
<p>It helps in many ways, some of which are not immediately obvious. The two I am most attuned to are research money and prestige. Granted, we get a ton of research money as it is, but exposure can only help.</p>
<p>As for prestige, it's nice to say that it shouldn't matter (or that we don't want students that care about prestige) but that's oversimplifying things. For example, I wanted to do Electrical Engineering since about sixth grade. The only school I dreamed about going to was MIT from sixth grade to eleventh simply because I had never heard of Caltech. If I had gotten into MIT I would have had a tough choice to make (I still think I would have chosen Caltech because I fell in love with the house system, but who knows?). </p>
<p>More prestige leads to a larger pool of applicants to select from and a higher yield.</p>
<p>There may even be some interesting "side effects"--I bet you that increased PR would also increase alumni giving. It's a lot harder to have school pride when you experience the following exchange:</p>
<p>Random Person: Where do you / did you go to college?
Techer: Caltech
Random Person: Cal Poly?
Techer: No, the California Institute of Technology
Random Person: Oh. Is that like ITT Tech?
Techer: No.
Random Person: Oh. Cool.</p>
<p>Actually, if you study abroad, in europe, australia, india, russia and tokyo to be specific, Caltech is shown as one of the strongest institutes that revolutionize certain subject areas--Theoretical physics, geophysics (alongside with stanford), theoretical mathematics, quantum mechanics etc. and many universities take Caltech more seriously in these fields vs MIT which is connection based. You also have to understand that networking is big. Caltech is famous if you enter the science stream. Again, Caltech lets their actions speak. They have the most nobel laureates than any of the other top engineering schools. I feel Caltech, academically, is better than most schools. Their full focus is on new challenges that seem impossible. They are highly respects, even if they do not network properly. It is still amazing to see how famous they area despite whatever rankings say. Nowadays, networking and connections are everything. This loses the academic aspect in many of the universities that follow this. Caltech is not one of them.</p>
<p>The original observation by QuantumArbiter seems really weird to me, although I have seen that opinion expressed once or twice before on CC. Among scientists, Caltech is universally known and very highly regarded. Very broadly speaking, I have the impression that the undergrad curriculum at Caltech tends to be more demanding than the undergrad curriculum at MIT (obviously, your mileage may vary). I've known about Caltech since I was 10 or 11.</p>
<p>When QuantumArbiter talked about "people" I assumed he meant the general public, not scientists and engineers. Scientists and Engineers tend to be very familiar with Caltech in my experience.</p>
<p>Yeah, lizzardfire, when people talk about "people," I'm generally excluded. :)</p>
<p>Does anyone here not want to go to a school because it's too famous? I'm kind of feeling that way.</p>
<p>If you're talking about engineering prestige in general, I think MIT and Stanford are more known than Berkeley and Caltech since they have been so successful with startups.</p>
<p>My son isn't too bothered that most people in our community seem to think he attends a trade or technical school when he says he goes to Caltech. He didn't go there because it was a "prestige" school, so he's not too worried when it doesn't get the "prestige" it deserves. He believes that when he gets his degree and looks for a job, those in the scientific community will be well aware of what type of school he attended.</p>
<p>^^^
agreed
I would suspect most Caltech students will either be pursuing higher education on the graduate level at another science oriented U, or going into a business that would, as well as any graduate school, consider Caltech to be very high on the prestige meter.
I am not sure it would affect Caltech this way, but in many cases notoriety on the "public" level doesn't always lead to the hoped-for results.</p>
<p>Sorry, I should have stressed that by "people" i mean the general public. I thought that was implied, but I guess it didn't seem so.</p>