<p>I was wondering if you could share your impressions about Caltech now that it started, and describe the transition from HS?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance</p>
<p>Given that:</p>
<p>1) I spent the last two years of high school living away from my parents.
2) By the second day of classes I already had two ex-girlfriends here.
3) I was here over the summer.
4) Another reason I don't feel like sharing.</p>
<p>I doubt any of my experiences will relate to anyone else.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Given that:</p>
<p>1) I spent the last two years of high school living away from my parents.
2) By the second day of classes I already had two ex-girlfriends here.
3) I was here over the summer.
4) Another reason I don't feel like sharing.</p>
<p>I doubt any of my experiences will relate to anyone else.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Extraordinary circumstances, to be sure. May I ask what your real name is? (PM is fine).</p>
<p>Well, I'll bite. Three things:</p>
<p>a) The Caltech campus is awesome. There are palm trees (incredible from the pov of a MA resident), birds-of-paradise plants, turtles, and at least two praying mantis. So in short, it's pretty cool. The trade-off is, apparently trees don't change color in the autumn, and snow does not fall during the winter. But the weather is wonderful, and not too hot, actually. It gets chilly at night due to the humidity. Packing jackets and long pants is a really, really good idea. Also a good idea: pack early. You will find that stuff takes up an INCREDIBLE amount of space. Plan accordingly, and plan ahead.</p>
<p>b) The people are really cool. Mostly. Some, who I don't know very well, have a very ... peculiar, in my view, sense of humor. But it's actually like high school, almost. Except everyone around you will be ridiculously brilliant. From my observations, there are in fact some cocky types with inflated egos and such...although I haven't noticed this in upperclassmen. I think that sort of sentiment gets beaten out of you before you're through with freshman year, but I can't be sure. Caltech, I've heard, is a great equalizer. One thing that I don't really like however, is how often upperclassmen say they don't hold up the friendships they've made during frosh camp after we all get separated into our permanent housing assignments. I would like it better if there was a greater feeling of community among all of Caltech, as opposed to _____ House is superior to all the other houses, and whatnot.</p>
<p>c) The workload is such that, after frosh camp, one's happiness level is supposed to decrease exponentially. Or at least that's what upperclassmen have said. They probably enjoy saying that, so I don't know if it's true or not. But it's definitely not light. My high school was not particularly competitive; this is a mind-blowing experience. If I came in here with the same attitude towards grades that I had at high school, I would not be holding up very well. Part of this is due to pass/fail, which is also good. I haven't been getting grades nearly as good as the kind I got at high school, but it's all relative, because I'm being exposed to much more and learning much more...I think. I also think I'm going to fail the chemistry quiz that was handed out today. we'll see.</p>
<p>4) The Honor Code is great. They give us so much trust, trust that is basically unmerited. In other words, it's ours to lose. Unlike the attitudes that a few of my friends at other colleges have taken to "honor codes," everyone is very serious about here. Possibly because of the ninjas.</p>
<p>5) Two things you should all be aware of: the food is not great. And the beds....they're up in the sky! That shocked me a little when I first checked in. But you get used to it.</p>
<p>So that was five things. For what it's worth.</p>
<p>Regarding those beds - Caltech needs to issue crash helmets to its students. I'm still trying to figure out how you manage to make the beds. Perhaps you don't.</p>
<p>I expect they are too busy doing homework to bother with making their beds.</p>
<p>zoogies,
thanks for responding to this thread! my frosh is justs giving me one word answers when I ask about classes,problem sets etc. so I'm sooo happy to get some insight into what life is like at Caltech for the freshmen.</p>
<p>By the way you may find some trees turning color in February or so. There used to be a maple on Wilson that turned red and a bunch of gingkos in San Marino (where we used to go running) that turned yellow. I do think Caltech has one of the most beautiful campuses in the country.</p>
<p>My kids loved the pizza that you could pick up for lunch - is it just the evening food in the houses that's mediocre?</p>
<p>"One thing that I don't really like however, is how often upperclassmen say they don't hold up the friendships they've made during frosh camp after we all get separated into our permanent housing assignments."</p>
<p>For what it's worth, my group of friends just evolved rather than was "separated." It included plenty of people outside my house; they just weren't the same people I'd met at frosh camp. I think this is entirely natural--there are lots of great people at Caltech, and by frosh camp you've only <em>really</em> had the opportunity to get to know a few of them.</p>
<p>Mmmm, I miss the pizza right now....</p>
<p>I'd just like to add that I think the food is really good. And it's not like I'm from a household that had cold spam for dinner every night or anything like that. The food at Frosh Camp was wonderful and the board dinner food ranges from slightly questionable (only one meal was like that so far) to delicious. The food at Chandler is really good once you figure out what you like and you can get "free" food from the open kitchen (I get cereal and drinks every morning before classes start for breakfast.)</p>
<p>Thanks to pass/fail, classes aren't stressful at all yet. Sets take a long time to do, but as long as you work with other people for at least some of them, they can be a lot of fun. Just don't expect to work particularly efficiently when working with other people. I've done almost all of my problem sets so far in groups, and none of them have ever really felt like work. Just make sure you can actually do the problems yourself and are not just having other people solve them for you.</p>
<p>thanks for the insights, people!</p>
<p>there is one "relatively unrelated" question, however
how do you know you can actually solve a problem on your own, after you did it in group?
To make it a bit clearer, when someone sees a solution, he thinks "Oh man, it's so easy; I could definitely solve it", and forgets that only a couple of minutes ago he was about to jump off a building...</p>
<p>But thanks again</p>
<p>
[quote]
how do you know you can actually solve a problem on your own, after you did it in group?
To make it a bit clearer, when someone sees a solution, he thinks "Oh man, it's so easy; I could definitely solve it", and forgets that only a couple of minutes ago he was about to jump off a building...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Speaking as a Junior, I've got a bit of experience with this. Personally, I tend to sort of intuitively leap to a starting point for a problem, which is great if your intuition is correct, but when it's not, you tend to spend a long, long time smashing your head against the problem until you get that "ah ha! I should have done it THIS way!"
Whereas in a group, hopefully at least one person started it the right way. And (for me at least... this can be harder to apply in some subjects) once I've seen how to do a problem the right way once, I can generally remember that for that type of problem, I should be looking at it this way/using this theorem, and so forth.</p>
<p>Also, I generally try to get the first line or two of the problem from someone, then solve it for myself once I'm heading in the right direction. Plus, core chem and bio were the subjects I most did the "oh, so that's how it's done" thing, and to be honest, I didn't care much about learning the material. I have an irrational hatred of chemistry as a subject and a perfectly rational hatred of Bi 1 as a class. Thus, the "okay, I've got answers that I kind of understand and could duplicate enough to pass the test" method worked just fine.</p>
<p>The best indicator is that you should be able to redo the problem completely on your own without looking at any materials produced while working with the group. It's always a good idea to only take rough notes when you're working with a group, and then write up the solution on your own. How much you have to rely on your notes is a good indication of how well you understand the problem. (And remember, there's a difference between understanding and memorizing -- you should be able to tell which you're doing.)</p>
<p>Also, your BoC rep is a great person to ask to help you understand what a reasonable level of collaboration is. If you're a frosh, you should be getting a BoC talk from your house rep soon.</p>
<p>Sorry, I've been pretty busy. I've loved Caltech so far. Rotation didn't go as I thought it would for me, but I ended up in a house I really like. The work is hard and it requires a lot of time, but I definitely still have time for a social life. The main difference from HS is that the material on homeworks and tests isn't necessarily taught, and it is your responsibility to learn things on your own--but if you get into Caltech, presumably you've probably done at least some learning on your own.</p>
<p>"The main difference from HS is that the material on homeworks and tests isn't necessarily taught, and it is your responsibility to learn things on your own--but if you get into Caltech, presumably you've probably done at least some learning on your own."</p>
<p>Actually, that sounds very appealing, IMHO.</p>
<p>You would think that... and then you wonder why you're paying to do that.</p>
<p>It's different for everyone, dLo- I go to a fair amount of lectures, and I haven't had to teach myself anything yet.</p>
<p>I should probably clarify a bit. It's not that lectures are useless, and they do teach you a lot of the basic concepts dealt with on the homework, but the teachers don't necessarily (sometimes they do, depends on the teacher) teach you exactly what's on the homework/quizzes/tests. I'm not saying that's good or bad, just that it's different.</p>