be really, really honest

<p>how smart are MIT students (especially girls) on average compared to guys, and also girls at Caltech.
how hardworking are MIT students (especially girls) on average compared to guys, and also girls at Caltech.</p>

<p>just wondering
thanks!</p>

<p>This is pretty much impossible to know for certain, not to mention the looming PC issue at hand ...</p>

<p>However, based on my own experience at Caltech, I have noticed no significant difference whatsoever for either case. The only thing I can generalize academically by gender is that there seem to be a lot less girls than guys in math, physics, CS, and EE. Aside from that simple observation, I can't say I've noticed any academic differences.</p>

<p>Honestly.</p>

<p>I fail to see how the shape of one's genitalia affects one's intelligence and/or ability to work hard.</p>

<p>What are you <em>actually</em> asking?</p>

<p>It looks like an indirect way of asking if Caltech's slightly more straightforward process ends up more consistently selecting students who'll be hard-working + academically motivated to the highest levels, even if both schools have plenty of intelligent, hard-working students.</p>

<p>The issue is that one would have to have been a student, and at that an undergraduate at both schools to make a very legitimate claim about this, or at worst, been an undergrad at one school and a grad student at the other who worked with undergraduates on a regular basis.</p>

<p>


</p>

<p>There are certain species of aquatic fish that store their reproductive organs in their skull.</p>

<p>^^^that was hilarious.</p>

<p>once you get there, nobody cares about how smart your classmates are, seriously. nor can you really tell</p>

<p>you're too busy worrying about learning to be competitive</p>

<p>or at least that's how it is at caltech, i can't speak for mit</p>

<p>
[quote]
you're too busy worrying about learning to be competitive

[/quote]
</p>

<p>It's NOT like that at MIT. Competitive? As in with each other? There's absolutely none of that at MIT. MIT doesn't rank its students, and cooperation and collaboration is STRONGLY encouraged, even required. Just to let you know.</p>

<p>And hardworkingness/intelligence of male/female students? There is no difference between the two. I can't speak for Caltech, but here, the girls are NO stupider or less diligent than the guys, in any way, shape, or form. I wish people would stop making those stupid assumptions.</p>

<p>la montagne: You actually agree with fizix2, who is saying basically the same thing about Caltech as we do about MIT. Learning takes up so much time that there's none left for competition. (Not that "learning to be competitive" takes up all your time.)</p>

<p>Syntactically ambiguous sentences are confusing, I read it the same way as you did the first time. =)</p>

<p>Ohhh, that makes so much more sense! Cool, then. =]</p>

<p>I agree with everyone that, once you're at MIT, you don't notice a difference between Group A and Group B in terms of intelligence, whatever your groups are: girls, 2400 scorers, white people, people with curly hair, whatever.</p>

<p>I additionally think that much of the perception that it's easier for girls to get in (and therefore that the girls accepted to MIT are not as intelligent as the guys) results from confirmation bias on the part of applicants. When you want to find a gender difference, your eyes jump straight to the part of a stats post that lists gender.</p>

<p>Incidentally, it's nice of the OP to start a potentially flame-warring thread in his/her normal CC identity this evening, rather than creating a troll ID to do such. Creating new IDs is, may I remind everyone, against CC's terms of service.</p>

<p>As a whole there is no difference, but they self-select into majors.</p>

<p>
[quote]
It's NOT like that at MIT. Competitive? As in with each other? There's absolutely none of that at MIT. MIT doesn't rank its students, and cooperation and collaboration is STRONGLY encouraged, even required. Just to let you know.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I also agree with this. If you want to succeed at MIT you'll pretty much have to frequently cooperate and collaborate with your peers.</p>

<p>But the OP never asked about whether MIT students compete with each other.</p>

<p>
[quote]
how smart are MIT students (especially girls) on average compared to guys, and also girls at Caltech.
how hardworking are MIT students (especially girls) on average compared to guys, and also girls at Caltech.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I can't speak for Caltech, but MIT students are definitely, as a rule, extremely smart and very hardworking. I'm afraid I don't quite see precisely what the OP is trying to drive at, though.</p>

<p>I'll play--I know one woman who was an undergrad at Caltech and one woman who was an undergrad at MIT. They were equally smart and hard-working, both earned Ph.D.'s, and both have been successful professionally. The only detectable difference between the woman at Caltech and the multiple male Caltech grads I know is that the males are (on average) slightly grumpier; the only detectable difference between the woman at MIT and the multiple male MIT grads I know is that the males are definitely balder. YMMV.</p>

<p>"woman at MIT and the multiple male MIT grads I know is that the males are definitely balder"</p>

<p>Ummm.... I hope there are more physical disparities, for if what you say is true, I feel sad for both the male and the woman :D</p>

<p>Oh, um. Yeah. (Embarrassed smiley.)</p>

<p>QuantMech brings up a good point, and one I had not previously considered -- in my lab, we have a male Caltech grad and a female Caltech grad, and the female is significantly less red-headed.</p>

<p>i'll second the fact that there's no noticeable intelligence difference between girls + guys of either school...</p>

<p>you're like comparing the 40th smartest kid in the US against the 43rd... it gets quite close</p>