Caltech - financial matters

<p>Hi,
I have a question regarding financial matters at Caltech. I have been admitted with a rather generous financial help, yet there are some questions I need to ask. Apart from the contributions I have to pay - how much money gets spent for additional costs, if any? Also, how do taxes work on the expenses that are listed in the financial aid award letter?
I am asking this primarily because I am an international, and Caltech is not need-blind for internationals.</p>

<p>hey I am international too, but in my package, it says like the money is coming from the international student grant...etc did you get that?</p>

<p>I think additional costs are just things like food and spending money. Caltech factors book fees into the total equation</p>

<p>also, since you already got financial aid from caltech as a international, the need-blind thing doesn't make a difference anymore. It only matter in the getting accepted apart ;)</p>

<p>Well, that was sort of my question, how much money in average gets spent - if any, besides the costs factored into the budget :)
Also, yes, my financial aid consists mainly of grants, a part of it is loans and student work.
Btw, does anyone know how accurate the expected earnings from student jobs are (I mean the numbers that appear on the financial award letter)?</p>

<p>Well, again, in case the question wasn't really clear - I'm interested in how much an average student spends in a year apart from the expenses calculated in the budget on the financial award letter.
And, any thoughts regarding earnings from student jobs?</p>

<p>How much does the average student spend on expenses not included in the budget? My son who's now a sophomore spends less than the expenses shown in the financial aid award letter. But we're in California so his travel costs are low. And he's not a big spender. He gets free food on campus when ever he can. Goes to free events for entertainment. (Just last week, a lecture by Stephen Hawking). He rarely buys clothes - though I've seen a few new t-shirts come home, most of those were free as well.<br>
So you can stay under budget, though I don't know for internationals how much the budget allows for traveling to and from home. Books on the other hand seem to be more expensive than the budget allows, the first term freshman year he spent a lot on books. Since then he's learned how to find the books on line so even the book expense has been reduced.<br>
As for jobs on campus, his work study job this year pays well(I think its about $25 per hour) and he doesn't work that many hours (he does tutoring). Freshman year he worked in a lab and it only paid about $10 per hour and since hours are limited for freshman he didn't make much money. This year he is spending most of his money on food but that is because he's living in off campus housing and so he doesn't have a food allowance, but he's still staying under the budget on the finaid award. Hope that helps.</p>

<p>He gets $25/hour? That's considerably more than what I make as a grad student here. :(</p>

<p>Racin,
from the Caltech website:
" As a Caltech tutor, you may set your own schedule and hourly rates, which typically range from $30 to $50 per hour, negotiable." I guess DS should be paid more :)<br>
There was also an interesting link on the Caltech finaid website that showed rates of pay for various work study positions.</p>

<p>Wow, that's crazy. Is he doing peer-tutoring or is Caltech pimping him out to locally wealthy families? I know my old roommate (also a grad student) did tutoring for a wealthy family a few towns over and was charging at the rate of $50/hr. At my undergrad school (CMU) you got paid a flat rate of $10 or so an hour to do peer tutoring by the school, and the tutees (?) didn't have to pay anything for the service.</p>

<p>Edit: Nevermind, just found the webpage. Putting my name on there right now! Sure beats doing the psych and econ experiments my friends do for a few extra bucks.</p>

<p>hmm, can't recall at which school exactly i saw it (probably caltech, the one that oaklandmom's mentioing), but i remember some rates for different kinds of work, and most of the programming positions are like 50$/hr ... the average for a student job is 10$/hr, but anyone who can do more than just be a bartender will likely find a much better paid job (so glad i learned programming in school hahahah :DDD )</p>

<p>Are there by chance any internationals from Caltech on this forum? Just asking to compare the amount of fin. aid and how they manage - I am afraid of burdening my parents too much.
P.S. You can do programming? As a freshman?</p>

<p>here are the 2007-2008 work study rates at Caltech <a href="http://cit.hr.caltech.edu/policies/PM/pm10_1_page2.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://cit.hr.caltech.edu/policies/PM/pm10_1_page2.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>you can do programming through SURF if you want, but that's during the summer. they pay you $6000 to work in a lab for 10 weeks, which is a really good deal, especially since you get research experience out of it and possibly journal papers. (note that housing usually sucks up like $2000 of it)</p>

<p>
[quote]
P.S. You can do programming? As a freshman?

[/quote]

That depends - how well can you program now? :D</p>

<p>If you want to go into industry with a CS degree, I suggest interning at one of the many companies that recruit on campus (Google and MS are popular choices). It pays a lot better for the same programming work, you get off campus, and it is more relevant to the industry career path than research experience. Many students also get job offers after their internships.</p>

<p>you gusy metnioned the SURF thing. is it hard to get a spot if we are not caltech freshmen?</p>

<p>I didn't get a SURF when I applied a few years ago as a student from another university, but I also didn't get into a bunch of other similar programs I should have been able to. I think it was because I asked someone for a recommendation that I shouldn't have. :(</p>

<p>SURF has a pretty limited amount of funding for non-Caltech students, so I'd imagine it is significantly more difficult. The website says the acceptance rate is ~70%, which I assume is overall, including Caltech and non-Caltech students. Some of the announcements of opportunity are explicitly limited only to Caltech students and having recommendations from Caltech professors probably helps in admission, but other than that it is hard to say since I can't find any statistics on it. If you want, you can look at the list of students from last year: <a href="http://www.surf.caltech.edu/SURFStudentIndex07.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.surf.caltech.edu/SURFStudentIndex07.pdf&lt;/a>. A lot of them are non-Caltech students, and from a pretty wide range of schools too. </p>

<p>Keep in mind that plenty of people do research at Caltech outside of the SURF program. If you know a professor who wants you and he/she has extra funding, there's not too much reason to have to do research through any program.</p>

<p>thanks! ya I am probably going to turn down caltech for undergrad, but I would like to have the opportunity to do summer reserach. </p>

<p>what other schools have SURF?</p>

<p>also is the application based on test scores, recommendations? what if we have down a lot of reserach in the past, does that help?</p>

<p>SURF admission is mostly based on your project proposal, the recommendation from the person you would be working with, and how well prepared you are for it academically (recommendations from professors in your field, relevant courses taken, GPA, academic awards, and research experience.) It's primarily for doing research at Caltech and JPL. If you want to do research at your undergrad institution and they don't have some sort of undergrad research program and you can't find a professor to fund you themselves, you might want to look into the REU program (google it, I don't know too much about it.)</p>

<p>wait you said "the recommendation from the person you would be working with"</p>

<p>we have to get that? so we have to be in contact with the professor a head of time?</p>

<p>There are two ways you get a SURF project: (1) There are announcements of opportunity on the SURF website that Caltech and JPL faculty put up when they want a specific project done or (2) you can contact a professor and develop a project with their help. </p>

<p>The former usually have specific things they want in a person for a project (e.g. "physics or astronomy major with programming experience") and contact information for the professor, post-doc, or grad student that you'll be working with. Usually, you'll find a project that you're interested in, email the contact with some of your information and why you'd be good for the project, and then interview with them. If you're far enough away where you can't interview in person easily, you can do it over phone or email. They'll probably give you reading material on the subject and papers related to the proposed project. Then you work with them to figure out exactly what your project will be (many of the announcements of opportunity are open-ended) and you'll write a short (2-3 pages) technical proposal that will be read by your SURF mentor and professors in the general field. By the time your application is reviewed, you'll probably have interacted with your mentor quite a few times, and he or she will have a pretty good idea how well prepared you are for project, and will be very qualified to write a review of you. In my experience, if your advisor really wants you to do research with them and thinks you are very well qualified, the other recommendations and academic factors wont matter as much.</p>

<p>The latter way to apply for a SURF is pretty much the same process, except you'll have to contact faculty first, and then come up with a project from scratch (they'll guide you with this.) Find someone whose research looks cool and email them with your research interests and qualifications. Not all professors want more undergrads working with them and not all respond in a timely manner, so make sure you have a list of people you might want to work with. Most professors will at least point you to a few of their postdocs or grad students that would like to mentor an undergrad. From there, it's sort of like the previous procedure but with more flexibility. This way has the advantage that you wont be competing with other students for the exact same project. On the other hand, it might be harder to get a professor to work with you if you haven't taken a class they've taught and aren't even a Caltech student.</p>