<p>I don't know anyone who went to Caltech's graduate school personally, so I'm just wondering what your experiences are. I hear so much about Caltech's undergraduate program, so I'm wondering why people do or don't choose to attend Caltech for grad school.</p>
<p>For one thing, I heard Caltech is <em>really</em> small, which can be attractive or not to some (i.e. especially so for some grad programs -- like math for instance).</p>
<p>Graduate experience here varies a ton depending on which department you’re in. We all have very different requirements, each advisor expects different things from you, and each department has its own atmosphere.</p>
<p>What sort of particular things do you want to know? I think I’m the only grad student from Caltech here at the moment.</p>
<p>Well, I will eventually apply to the math graduate program. I guess probably what I want to know is what the grad student culture is, + how rigid its programs typically are. </p>
<p>For instance, are students usually highly independent in choosing what they want to do with their time, few requirements for graduation besides dissertations, etc. How hard are qualifying exams and/or how stressful is the process <em>specifically at Caltech</em>. Are the graduate students out to arm each other out to an extent?</p>
<p>I’ve heard some things about, say Princeton graduate school in math – that the culture is certainly not a relaxed one (and I mean, not relaxed beyond just the fact that grad students will work hard). I’ve heard at UChicago, everyone starts with certain standard courses, and it’s a very testing-centered school. I just don’t know much about Caltech.</p>
<p>You may not be a math grad student, but I’d still like to hear what you have to say. Classes, quals, professor-student relationships, everything. Ultimately, a huge role in my selection (if I’m lucky enough to be admitted to any of these schools) will obviously be the number + quality of faculty in my proposed line of study, but all these factors are important to me to know about as well.</p>
<p>Sadly, most of these factors are very dependent upon your department/group. In my department we have to take 15 classes, have candidacy at the end of your second year, and most people generally pass on their first try. As far as I know, nobody’s failed their second try. Most labs are pretty co-operative, though there may be a person or two that’s really secretive and unwilling to get along with the rest of their group.</p>
<p>I guess most professors at Caltech are a little more distant than you’d find at other schools since so many of them have duties outside of their normal teaching/research abilities. This causes a lot of them to be gone frequently or to not be as hands-on as what I’ve had at other places I’ve worked.</p>
<p>The general thing you’ll hear from grad students about classes is if you’re interested in a subject, don’t take a class in it. They’re typically a lot harder than seems necessary, don’t focus on the things you’re interested in, and are generally a worse use of your time than reading a textbook or two on your own time.</p>
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<p>What duties to Caltech professors that professors at other schools don’t? Could you expand on this?</p>
<p>Based on my interactions in EE, I’m pretty convinced that trying to generalize “grad school” over an entire school is going to be a waste of your time. Virtually everything is very departmentally dependent. Why not speak to grad students in math at the schools you are interested in? Also, there is “thegradcafe.com”</p>
<p>Edit: In EE, Caltech tends to be a lot more relaxed than a lot of the other top schools in terms of attitude and requirements. No idea about math.</p>
<p>Absolutely, though I am not merely posting for purposes of seeing how good of a fit I’d be or anything. Actually the main reason is just curiosity. I’d not mind hearing what biologists, chemists, engineers, anyone, have to say. I just don’t know ANY Caltech grad students, whereas I know a decent bit about experiences of students at many other top math schools.</p>
<p>As for math, quite frankly Lizzard, I’d probably ignore most of these factors coldly (as hinted) unless I were facing the decision among 2+ terrific schools. At the point where I’m convinced there are faculty especially strong, doing stuff in an area I’d be interested in, I’d begin considering other factors. </p>
<p>Still, I thought maybe there’s a math grad student or two at Caltech – maybe even a former one – who might be around here :)</p>
<p>There are only about four or five techers who post regularly on CC. I’m not sure if any of them are math majors or not.</p>
<p>try thegradcafe.com</p>
<p>I see, I see. The gradcafe. The only reason I knew that exists is from friends applying to graduate school who used to check it roughly every 10 minutes to see if there were updates, in angst :)</p>
<p>OK then, I might be relatively out of luck here, but was worth a shot.</p>
<p>I am not a grad student at Caltechbut was an undergrad there and am a math grad student elsewhere…
The department here is REAALLLY small, there are only ~6 students entering a year, and 15 professors. There’s also a really high faculty turnover rate- in the last four years at least four young tenured professors have left-more than a quarter of the department. This means
Since the department is so small, there’s not much intra-departmental collaboration between professors. Your advisor (and perhaps a postdoc) will likely be the only people you can talk to about math. As a result grad students seem to work alone more than for example at UChicago where I’m a grad student now, simply because no one else has the same research interests. That didn’t appeal to me (I’d rather have external motivation from other people working on the same stuff), and I didn’t apply to grad school at Caltech.</p>
<p>In addition, if your advisor leaves, you’ll likely have to either transfer with him/her or completely change research areas, and if your research interests change (which happens to lots of people in the first year or two of grad school) you’ll probably have to transfer. This happens to a nontrivial number of grad students. So…there are definitely disadvantages to being at a place this small.
As far as requirements, grad students are required to take or place out of full year sequences in algebra, topology and analysis and pass quals in two of the three. The quals have a take-home written part and an oral component. Some people have to take them more than once but I haven’t heard of anyone being kicked out for failing quals- the program is too small to begin with. When I took the corresponding grad classes we periodically had old qual problems for homework…and they seemed not extraordinarily hard.
In addition, grad students have to take 9 other classes of their choice, at least two of them in logic or combinatorics. So the course requirements are somewhat higher than at most places. On the other hand, the teaching load is quite low compared to most schools, and typically consists entirely of TA-ing/grading/running recitation sections- all the full-time undergrad classes are taught by faculty.
I don’t think the math faculty here are any more “distant” than those at other schools…given the small size of the department most of the hot-profile are quite enthusiastic to have grad students work with them.</p>
<p>Wow, what an incredibly pleasant surprise and extremely helpful response. </p>
<p>It so happens I think I recall once having asked you something before – I believe you chose from schools such as Berkeley, Stanford, Chicago of course, Columbia maybe…</p>
<p>What made you land on Chicago, if I may ask? Was it purely research interest, or other factors too? How do you find the graduate student culture at Chicago?</p>
<p>Again, thanks very much, your response was precisely what I was looking for.</p>
<p>Yeah, I was choosing between these places and also Courant, Michigan, UCLA, and some lower ranked places that I didn’t really consider. At the time I was sort of interested in an eclectic mix of things I wasn’t really an expert in and wasn’t sure they had an interesting intersection (lie theory, (soft) functional analysis on Lie groups and other interesting spaces, probability/asymptotics on such spaces, unitary representation theory, classical algebraic geometry…) so I didn’t want to go to a really small department where I would have no one to talk to about most of these things or be cajoled into working on something I ended up not really interested in (this happened to me several times as an undergrad) but also a really big department where I would have infinity things to choose from…
So Chicago was in the middle in that sense. When I visited there I saw people were doing things I was interested in, and no one seemed majorly unhappy. In particular there were lots of people working on geometry on homogeneous spaces and Teichmueller theory and the word on the street was they all got awesome postdocs and subsequent jobs. Also there was all this geometric langlands stuff and related things in geometric representation theory which I knew nothing about except hearing it described as “taking all the analysis out of noncommutative harmonic analysis” but which seemed cool on a philosophical level to at least check out (I decided I’m to stupid for it though…)</p>
<p>The teaching loa (none first year, just grading one class second year) was also MUCH lighter than at Berkeley/Michigan/UCLA which I liked. When I visited Berkeley and UCLA it seemed like many of the people had trouble finding an advisor and that unless I either already knew who I wanted to work with (and that person wanted to work with me) or had superb social skills, I would better be served elsewhere. I got into Stanford off the waitlist pretty late, so I didn’t have time to visit, and by that point I had already pretty much decided on Chicago and didn’t see much reason to change my mind. </p>
<p>As far as the environment at Chicago- the atmosphere is really cordial. Students are really proactive in organizing seminars and reading groups on topics of interest, which is not something I noticed at Caltech (although as an undergrad I wasn’t really looking). The first year program does take time away from thinking about the math that I would like to be thinking about (I wouldn’t spend a term on category theory…), which could have been avoided if I was at Stanford.
But I have a famous advisor whose students have done really well, working [er, I guess so far at least learning about] on aspects of Teicmueller dynamics, and connections with modular curves, and dynamics on homogeneous spaces, which uses almost all of the fore-mentioned things I was interested; there are three professors, three postdocs and a bunch of grad students here working on related stuff…so I am quite happy.</p>
<p>My ignorance for terminology – is “classical algebraic geometry” just to say we’re working over the complex numbers (say, in contrast with “arithmetic” geometry)?</p>
<p>I think the standard thing is that if you’re at Berkeley and want to study algebraic geometry, you’ll find an adviser, but probably much tougher if you want to do something else! </p>
<p>The one thing one famous professor at Berkeley (where I’m an undergraduate) told me is that one of the places I’d be able to find an adviser in some form of K-theory (maybe it’s sort of a phase, but I want to learn more about it) with relative certainty is Chicago. I’m sure their AG faculty is terrific as well, unless it’s changed in several years (after all, Prof. Eisenbud went to graduate school there). </p>
<p>Wow, a term on category theory. Our first-year algebra sequence (one of the more intense classes we offer) spends the first month or so on it, and it’s usually a tough unit, but definitely not longer than that! That sounds fun in a way, though in some senses after an intro, seeing category theory pop up naturally in several different areas and picking it up as one goes sounds the easiest way. </p>
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<p>This is particularly important to me. I’d really like to spend my first year or two doing lots and lots of this. </p>
<p>Hmm, Chicago sounds quite terrific – the only one point is that I love to have the freedom to read whatever math I want. Out of curiosity, I looked up the site, and it says:</p>
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<p>What exactly is the process to satisfying them, some sort of examination? (Or could you just demonstrate you took a similar course?) For instance, you probably had at the very least the standard analysis and algebra before coming into UChicago.</p>
<p>And great to know you’re happy at your school 
– more to the point, great to know there’s A grad student out there who’s happy!</p>
<p>EDIT: Your name is even happyentropy!</p>
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<p>Many professors, at least in my department, are on lots of boards of whatevers or editors of some journal or whatnot. It generally requires them being out of town a lot. It’s not a really big deal, since most of them are still more than happy to talk with their grad students. If anything it’s just a minor quibble.</p>
<p>I will agree on what happyentropy said about not a whole lot of collaboration going on. You’ve got a lot of people that are at the top of their field, and not all of them are willing to share ideas, turf, or their grad students’ time.</p>
<p>It’s worth noting that I haven’t seen / heard about a substantial difference between Caltech and the other top schools in Electrical Engineering (that is, all of the big name profs are gone sometimes due to journals or grants or whatever in EE). I think that this is as departmental as everything else.</p>