<p>I just thought I would hop on here and offer my help. I'm currently a frosh at Tech and if you guys have any questions about Caltech feel free to ask here or message me on AIM at Born2Run16517. I can't answer questions about if your chances are good or not, because honestly I don't know. Having met most of my frosh class we are all so varied in our stats there is no way to tell you if you will or will not get in besides applying. The only common thread between all applicants is a love for math and science. I cannot stress enough that you need to love math and science to apply/come here. Anyways if you have any questions about Caltech as a school feel free to post them here or message me on AIM.</p>
<p>ok this is completly stupid but i can never get these dumb blue book problems...ok so can ne one help me with it?
In a rectangular room 30'x12'x12', a spider is at the middle of an end wal, on foot from the celling
The fly is at the middle of the opposite end wall, one foot above the floor. The fly is so frightened it cant move.
What is the shortest distance the spider must crawl in order to capture the fly?(hint less then 42') i may seem totally stupid but i need help and my teacher wont help ne one out with these so i hope u help...thanks...thats my question for u could u help plz?!?!</p>
<p>Right now I'm in math1a and I have very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand math1a really teaches you no practical mathematics, so the physicist in me is quite frustrated, but on the other hand it does teach you how to think and some of the proofs we do when completed are quite amazing. On the whole math1a is very frustrating at times but also quite rewarding when you finally get it. </p>
<p>The academic enviorment at Caltech is incredibly cooperative. There is no and I mean no compeition here. Everyone helps everyone else. I've had several upperclassmen help me with problem sets and I do every problem set with a group of other frosh. Compeition is really looked down upon here so if you are one that is worried about being first in the class or scoring better on exams than other people Caltech is not place for you. Collaboration is emphaised here by both the students and the professors. Everything we do save exams and quizzes are collaborative.</p>
<p>About the wiki page- accurate as far as I can tell, but don't base any opinions on it, except the obvious "the houses are all unique".</p>
<p>as far as happines, it varies. There are some people who are terribly unhappy here (they tend to transfer), there are some who love it so much that despite transferring out due to difficulty they transferred back, and everywhere in between. Also, it depends on circumstances. I occasionaly hate life at 10 PM while I'm doing a physics set, and love Tech about 6 hours later when I go on a Canter's run. </p>
<p>Basically, how happy people are varies with major, house (by which I mean how much you like the one you're in, not by any given house), and year. Sophomore ChemE majors tend to hate life. Senior E&AS majors, just the opposite. </p>
<p>And among my friends, we universally agree that Tech is awesome when we don't have work to do.</p>
<p>"the unhappy people you mentioned who transferred,is that because they can't handle the courseload/the difficulty of courses?"</p>
<p>Depends. In some cases, yes- Tech is HARD, and there are people here who need to work almost constantly to pull a C. Some people can't/don't want to handle that. In some cases, it's a matter of "I COULD have a decent GPA, but I don't actually want to work THAT hard for it". In some cases, it's a social life issue- Tech's too small, or they don't like Pasadena, or they realized that they actually wanted to learn some non-math/science/engineering stuff. </p>
<p>But the difficulty is a major issue. Everyone takes core. So even biology or Economics or history and philosophy of science majors will take quantum physics. Most Techers could probably go to a state school and with a bit of effort end up with a 4.0. At Tech, some of these same people put in a lot more effort just to keep from failing. There are a lot of safety nets, but if you don't want to put in the work, or consider a high GPA to be terribly important, Tech won't be a happy place.</p>
<p>I was being semi-facetious. ChemE is notoriously hard. E&AS is regarded as "easy" (You can't spell easy without E&AS.) At least, compared to other majors.</p>
<p>And sophomore year (the first two terms) is tough. 'Cause you're still on core, while starting to take courses in your major. Whereas I know of a guy who took 12 units (That's one real course and chamber singers, I believe) second term last year, when he was a senior E&AS major. He won at senior year.</p>
<p>does taking IB/AP courses in high school prepare a student adequately enough for academic success at caltech?The answer is probably no with so many IxO winners there,thus my next question:what can a senior student do to prepare for the academic life ahead at caltech?or how far ahead of an IB HL/AP BC course should a student go to get a decent mark at caltech?</p>
<p>Academic success here is related to the time and energy a student invests into their studies, not the courses they took in high school. </p>
<p>At some point, the material becomes sufficiently advanced and complex enough that even the brightest students have to sit down and start studying.</p>
<p>85397's question may have a more complex version. It is just possible that succeeding, or even passing, Caltech work requires more than putting in the time to study. It could be that the level of work requires a great deal of brilliance, and without it, no level of energy and effort suffices. People may give up studying not because they are lazy, but because they can't hack it; they give up.</p>
<p>So the more complex version may be: suppose I am willing to work hard, but I am not sure if I am bright enough for Caltech. Are there any ways to find out, from high school course work, whether I am bright enough? Another way of phrasing this question is: does Caltech's admissions office makes mistakes and admits students who can't do the work and shouldn't be there?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Are there any ways to find out, from high school course work, whether I am bright enough?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Probably. And for this reason, the answer to the second question is...</p>
<p>
[quote]
Does Caltech's admissions office make mistakes and admit students who can't do the work and shouldn't be there?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It tries very hard not to, and usually succeeds. The very first priority is to admit a class only of students who can actually hack it through core and the rest of Caltech without inhumane amounts of pain. This regularly results in heartbreak on both sides of the admissions process, because being so stringent about pure aptitude sometimes prevents us from having applicants that we fall in love with for every other reason. So it's not all that easy to keep asking "yes, but can they make it" -- and yet that's the question that we have to answer before we can proceed. The task isn't made easier by the fact that Caltech is probably harder, on average, than any other school in the United States. But to do it any other way would be mean.</p>
<p>Back to your first question...
[quote]
Are there any ways to find out, from high school course work, whether I am bright enough?
[/quote]
As I explained, presumably there have to be, or the Committee on Admissions should go home and watch TV. But as for whether there are ways for a particular applicant to know about himself? I'd say (having been an applicant recently ;-) that's it's too hard. Of course, it's easy to tell at the extremes. If you just won the International XYZ Olympiad, you are probably capable of doing well here. If you regularly get munched by your Calculus exams at school, then Caltech would not be a fun place at all. But in between the extremes, it's harder to tell. Sometimes what seems amazing in the context of a given community is mediocre on a national scale, and vice versa if you come from a very competitive school, for example. </p>
<p>So the problem with self-evaluation is that most people who end up at Caltech have either met very few or very many people at a similar level of ability, and this makes it very hard to get an accurate extrapolation of how you stack up in the national pool on the combination of factors that matter. Hence, I my recommendation as a practicing psychologist (joke) is to try to think about that less ;-)</p>
<p>A follow-up question. Does Caltech's Admissions Office (and others', for that matter) track students thru their 4-year careers and compare their actual outcomes with the outcomes the Admissions Office predicted at acceptance time? My guess is that such an effort would be beyond the scope and resources of most Admissions Offices, but if they do perform such studies, have they been able to isolate predictive variables that are particularly powerful?</p>
<p>That's a really superb question. Caltech is in the process of instituting such a process, and we hope it will make us even better at admitting a class which would happily make it through the rigor. If Ben J. is around and wants to chime in, does MIT track its admits' progress and try to isolate the most predictive ratings/variables?</p>