A question for (mostly) Ben Golub

<p>There's no grade deflation at all. Just grade inflation. Caltech has been getting easier for decades. The technical classes are still hard though, and the core curriculum is meant to challenge students to be competent in many scientific fields.</p>

<p>How do we get ahead over the summer (as Ben said). I've been doing a lot of past PSets for the intro classes (Ma 1, Ph 1, Ch 1) to prepare. Is this a good idea if I don't want to be overwhelmed next year or just a waste of time?</p>

<p>DS intends to write all his college essays in LaTeX. He uses it now almost exclusively instead of a regular WP package!</p>

<p>I don't see why you'd write essays in LaTeX, but for math and physics problem sets, it's awesome.</p>

<p>have you guys discovered any other uses for latex yet?</p>

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How do we get ahead over the summer (as Ben said). I've been doing a lot of past PSets for the intro classes (Ma 1, Ph 1, Ch 1) to prepare. Is this a good idea if I don't want to be overwhelmed next year or just a waste of time?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>This is an extremely good idea.</p>

<p>I agree with zoogies. Looking over previous years sets before I came helped me prepare a little. Don't spend too much time working on them or studying for placement exams, though, because you should be enjoying summer break.</p>

<p>Other uses for LaTex? I helped put together a songbook and chordbook (a couple of hundred pages long, with aligned chords and such) in LaTeX. Aligning chords is easy if you make your own commands in the code.</p>

<p>I've written essays in LaTeX. It actually produced much nicer looking documents than Word, although I think that's been remedied with the new style packages in Word 2007.</p>

<p>Sometimes when I'm reading the posts I get confused between whether your talking about a typeface or condom material...</p>