<p>I should be more specifc. I am not at all equipped to tell you if your stats are good enough to get into Caltech. Besides that, anything's game, particular the social scene (I'm from a difference Hovse than born2run, so i may have a different perspective), the core classes, my experience with scholarships/aid, etc.</p>
<p>How are the research opportunities? Is it easy to find a good research job?</p>
<p>SURF stands for Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship; it's the typical route for a research project during the summer. You find a mentor during the year and write a project proposal. If it's accepted, you get a SURF for the summer. I don't remember the acceptance rates (Ben probably knows), but I'm fairly sure they're above 50%. </p>
<p>Most frosh don't do research doing the school year, if only because they're adjusting to Caltech life and Caltech rigor, but plenty do SURFs the summer after freshman year. Moreover, a lot of upperclassman do reserach during the school year as well. At the very minimum, you have to do research and write a thesis for whatever your major is, but from what I gather, most everyone does more.</p>
<p>That doesn't quite answer your question, though. It's pretty easy to get research here. There are a lot of labs, especially relative to the number of undergraduates here. You don't have to wait until summer to do research either, like I mentioned before. If you're interested in a particular lab, you can e-mail the head and ask if they have room. The ratio for students to full-time professorial faculty alone is 3:1, so there are plenty of opportunities available. More specifically, you probably won't have to fight the guy next to you to get a research spot.</p>
<p>I almost forgot JPL. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is co-sponsored (not sure if that's the apporpriate word) by Caltech and NASA. Many students do some exciting research there. I know one fellow frosh who worked there last summer testing the Mars Rover, for instance. Anyway, that's another popular option that easily available.</p>
<p>I was lucky enough to do research as a prefrsoh this past summer at Caltech. This post is already long enough, but if you want more information about my experience or someone else's specifically, feel free to ask.</p>
<p>Please tell us about the different houses. What are some stereotypes about each house's members and activities?</p>
<p>So... no way.</p>
<p>I shouldn't leave you with that :-P. So one of the <em>huge</em> things at Caltech is the Honor Code, the one-stop rule shop, basically. Roughly paraphrased, it basically says that no member of the Caltech community (not limited to students, faculty, staff, alums, pre-frosh) can take unfair advantage of another member. One of the corollaries of this all-encompassing guideline is the set of Rotation Rules that everyone must follow. </p>
<p>The point of Rotation Rules is to not bias some students toward certain houses. This limits what an upperclassman can say about the subject, and most things that <em>are</em> said need to be prefaced with "In my opinion" and/or "In the past". Even using this, though, it can get sketchy.</p>
<p>For instance:
"In the past, Booty house wears different color graduation robes than all the other graduating seniors." is acceptable. Technically,
"In my opinion, Booty house blows." is probably acceptable also, though frowned upon by BOC reps (BOC = Board of Control, one of the two major Honor code enforcers). </p>
<p>Consequences for breaking Rotation Rules are fairly severe, ranging from hurting your House's frosh picks to getting you kicked off on-campus housing (permanently?) and even worse... so yeah.</p>
<p>Given that, however, I think some general things about the houses would help. One thing you'll here often is "They're All Fine Houses". Now, I personally don't believe that's true and, chances are no one here does. But everyone disbelieves it for a different reason, so there's no use poking around about it <em>that much</em>.</p>
<p>Second of all, even though picking the right House is important, it doesn't completely dominate your social life, or at least it hasn't for me. Obviously, you'll more easily become familiar with those in your House since you live in said House. However, statistically speaking, most of the friends you make during frosh camp won't be in the same house as you. So through them, you can easily branch out and have friend in other houses, if you so desire. </p>
<p>OK, this post is getting too long. Please ask more about the housing system or anything else.</p>
<p>Where is one likely to hear the words "one wussey burger for cal tech 4 eyes."</p>
<p>Although not all the houses are right for me, I do believe that they are all fine houses. </p>
<p>To beprepn: don't know.</p>
<p>beprepn: i have no idea if that was supposed to be funny or an allusion to something else that was once funny.</p>
<p>omgninja: yeah that's probably a better way of putting it. I made it sound like some were <em>bad</em> when that's not quite I think. In any case, they aren't all fine <em>for me</em>.</p>
<p>Is the saying that 1 credit = 1 hour/week generally an underrepresentation of how many hours most students take or not? Of course, it varies from person to person, but I'm generally curious about how long most students spend on their homework.</p>
<p>Totally depends. Perhaps it is a general underrepresentation, but it really does vary from person to person and also from course to course. For instance, my political science course this term was 9 units, but on average, I spent no more than 4 hours per week. That's pretty rare, though. I had other courses that were 9 units that I spent more like 12+ hours on per week. And then there is a small handful of infamous courses, like EE52, which (like all others) is supposed to take 10 weeks to complete, but I've only heard of people completing it in ~30 weeks.</p>
<p>I've had 9 unit courses (putatively 9 hours a week) that took perhaps 9 hours TOTAL of work, and 9 unit courses that took 20+ hours per week.</p>
<p>But I have heard of people finishing EE52 in the standard period.</p>
<p>free speech?</p>
<p>Haha, it's good that people finish EE52 on time. I guess those people aren't quite so vocal about it, and they don't make dinner announcements about it at the end of the 10-week period. :-P</p>
<p>Another big factor is whether you go to lecture or not. For most standard 9 unit courses, the breakdown is 3 units lecture, 6 units homework. If you don't go to lecture, that's 3 hours right there.</p>
<p>Not to make my disagreement with congruence too prominent, but I'm sort of with pebbles on this one. I'm pretty sure, after much thought, that the Honor Code doesn't entail Rotation Rules, which are their own (moderately stupid and immoderately misinterpreted) entity. </p>
<p>Galen, the former ASCIT President, had no trouble saying (on this board) that Ricketts likes to have trips where they burn stuff and act rowdy, for example. So, following his esimable lead, I don't feel particularly bad adding that Fleming House wears red robes on graduation day and is very into sports. Or that lockpicking and tunnelling are particularly widespread in Blacker.</p>
<p>The real problem with describing the houses isn't that we're not allowed to say this or that; it's more that each house is a large and diverse thing, so it would require too much effort to really give a useful summary. The Wikipedia entry about the House system is a good place to start.</p>
<p>Really? (see what you get when you ask frosh questions?)</p>
<p>To some extent that makes sense, as I personally couldn't quite put RR under the honor code without sounding somewhat half-assed about it to myself. So I'll a be little looser about the Rules next time around :-P.
Of course, that's another problem. During Rotation, some upperclassmen are so paranoid about not breaking Rotation Rules that it tends to rub off on the frosh, myself being a prime example. </p>
<p>Let me practice: In my opinion, Avery's anti-social environment makes it suck as a House (with a captial H).</p>
<p>Wow, that felt good.</p>
<p>On this note, does anyone know how many people ranked Avery?</p>
<p>I would have ranked Avery in the top 3. </p>
<p>With what I know today, I really wouldn't care where I lived except that I would NOT live in 1 house specifically. I personally wouldn't mind for rotation to disappear (which I think it has in the past). Rotation's too artifical to be useful; maybe it's fun for some students, but overall I felt mislead and disappointed (and mostly that it was a waste of time).</p>
<p>haha congruence -- the irony is that i might be somewhat responsible for your conceptions about the rules. so i apologize if my occasional disinclanation to get hounded by nonsense-mongers led me to be overcautious myself. but doesn't the freedom feel good?</p>
<p>but yes, rotation and the houses inspire lots of feelings, both good and bad, among the Caltech student body. if you are admitted, you should make sure you are comfortable with this aspect of student life.</p>
<p>(though i personally never loved the houses so much and have been very happy nonetheless at caltech.)</p>
<p>Just to make sure it's clear -- Rotation Rules really have nothing to do with the Honor Code. They're guidelines that are supposed to prevent us from unfairly biasing you for or against a house (e.g. we're not allowed to give you alcohol or take you off campus for more than 4 hours). Furthermore, Rotation Rules are NOT enforced by BoC -- they're enforced by IHC (Interhouse Committee -- composed of the presidents of all the houses). But don't worry about the misconception -- half of the upperclassmen I talked to during rotation thought that we (BoC) dealt with Rotation violations.</p>
<p>I know the reason I've been cautious in the past about Rotation Rules is that posting something about a House on a forum is VERY different from saying something to someone in person. It's read by so many more people, and it's there for anyone to access for years to come. Plus, I've always thought that something you read carries more weight than something told in a personal conversation.</p>
<p>As for webhappy's question -- the IHC decided not to release those numbers.</p>