<p>lizzardfire, Caltech students do have a distinct air to their speech; I don't know that we should call it elitism but I know what's being referred to and it is typified by you. In particular your questionable usage of the word petty, itself within a flowery and prosaic sentence structure.</p>
<p>Egalitarian I agree with, but that same egalitarianism sometimes seems to come across in an (as pebbles says) aggrandized way. Personally I'm fine with it.</p>
<p>geomom wrote:</p>
<p>
[quote]
This attitude strikes me as similar to the cavalier attitude toward Caltech's low yield, which seems to me to be essentially "Most admitted students still wouldn't fit here, because they couldn't hack it anyway. Their loss." That is one hypothesis. The other hypotheses are that other institutions offer more fluff benefits (dating ambassador's daughters) or more real benefits (equal access to academic rigor but more training in making your ideas become a reality). Or other explanations...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think the more accurate view of the yield situation is that there are certain personal qualities which make Caltech a good fit and even among admits those personal qualities are pretty rare. That's not a perjorative remark about the people who turn us down. Since Caltech is so focused in both its offerings and the people there, to get the most out of Caltech you should be in one of two categories:</p>
<p>(i) quite committed to a techie career (scientist or engineer), focused, and not interested in getting the polish required to date an ambassador's daughter, or in interacting much with fuzzy people in general. happiest around very nerdy, very smart people and wanting a place where "no politically correct compromise" is a founding principle. turned off by the slickness of MIT and its unquenchable yearning to be Harvard. perhaps irrationally committed to various kinds of purity and wanting to be at a place, for once, which is not political and which is filled with wonderfully naive, nerdy people like yourself.</p>
<p>(ii) already polished and broadminded; happy and comfortable with fuzzies but willing to take a four year break from them to experience the world's most intense academic bootcamp. confident that you are already pretty smooth around the edges and that you would be inspired and motivated more by people of type (i) than by the fuzzies whom you know and love.</p>
<p>So basically I'm saying the two ideal types for Caltech are those of (i) irredeemable ultranerd and (ii) east-coast preppy with a very serious passion for science. Most people, especially most high school nerds, are in between and hence in neither of these extreme and fairly unusual categories. They see themselves wanting to soften a bit around the edges and correctly perceive that Caltech will not help much with that, whereas an Ivy (and to some extent, MIT) will. What many Techers regard as MIT's slickness and increasing servitude to muddled ideals, most admits regard as an admirable engagement with social issues and a savvy recognition of the political realities of life. They want a more normal place. MIT is definitely a more normal place on many dimensions.</p>
<p>See, this is where it's easy to hear elitism. The reason is that for MITers, "normal" is kind of a insult. Who wants to be normal? But clearly, lots of people do and it's not bad. Caltech is just a bit more pure and intense than anywhere else, and you have to have extreme preferences to value that very highly. Most admits don't. By the way, it's not the case that the smartest students are the ones who value it most. It's an idiosyncratic preference that probably is not well correlated with intelligence at the high end.</p>
<p>Let me just anticipate two responses. Similarly to collegealum314's earlier remarks, one might say MIT is just as pure and intense as Caltech. But this is wrong. Yes, many classes are just as hard, but the institution (esp. admissions) has made many compromises -- as I know you agree -- and while it makes MIT a more normal place, it changes the culture and the ethos in subtle but important ways.</p>
<p>The second response is, "Clearly MIT chose a better range of the curve. Your types (i) and (ii) are really weird and we're glad we don't exist primarily to please them." Very well. As Not quite old masterfully said, I would be very sad if there were no room in the US for a place as extreme as Caltech, but I certainly am happy if it exists and is not the most popular destination ever.</p>
<p>"3) I suspect that most scientists of my age know a few other scientists who've founded start-ups based on a really good idea (or ideas), become CEO's of the start-ups, and then had control of the company wrested from them by the MBA/JD's they had to bring in. Some of those who lost control are as polished as anyone I know--of course, my simple is biased toward the technical side. So, geomom, if you are picking up any dislike for MBA/JD's from me, it's a result of tactics that I personally consider underhanded, used by a few people who have those credentials. I don't mean to stereotype based on degrees, though! Self-defense--(or a really excellent lawyer) to construct air-tight agreements and enforce them against some smooth operators--might be needed more than polish or persuasiveness."</p>
<p>Yeah, this happened to a friend of mine while at MIT. I think that was the last time he worked with Harvard guys. He was very socially polished, but I think too trusting. Seriously, I used to get like 50 emails a day from Harvard people looking for someone who had a startup idea and would do the technical part. It's not hard to convince these people to work with you.</p>
<p>River Phoenix: The idea that Caltech students are like me is EXACTLY what I am referring to. Most Caltech students are nothing like me at all. At Caltech, I'm largely considered somewhat loud and obnoxious. Even my friends won't deny this, although they'd probably say that I'm loud and obnoxious in a lovable way. I also have a bad habit of being slightly condescending on occasion. </p>
<p>These traits are definitely not traits that the typical Techer has. I'm a bit disturbed that you (like pebbles) make generalizations about the Caltech student body without giving evidence. </p>
<p>In addition, I fail to see how my use of the word petty is questionable, or how questionable word use is typical of Caltech students (or flowery prose, for that matter, at a tech school). Dictionary.com lists as one of the definitions for petty: "mean or ungenerous in small or trifling things". I apologize if you weren't able to pull this meaning out of the context of my sentence, but I assure you, it is the meaning I intended.</p>
<p>All cows in England are brown. la la la!</p>
<p>(Perception is all.)</p>
<p>Caltechers agonise about whether they are second-to-MIT.
MITers on the other hand, simply take it as given that they are the best.
Only Harvard makes them feel insecure.</p>
<p>That simple fact speaks volumes.</p>
<p>I’m intrigued by Ben’s repeated use of the word “purity” when referring to Caltech. I want to try to reflect on that a bit to see if I’m understanding it right. I think what he means by purity is that an elegant statement of the truth is the ultimate ideal at Caltech. So, smoothing of feelings and silken rhetoric are irrelevant because those things are about emotions and not truth. Politically correct compromise is loathsome because it shades the truth. In this context, Lizzardfire’s statement that Caltech’s environment “is one of the most egalitarian I've ever encountered” comes from the fact that the culture is not about personalities, but rather about ideas, and that anyone coming up with a really good idea can get a hearing. </p>
<p>If I’ve got it right so far, that’s a beautiful thing. But then I wonder, why this and nothing else? Why not go for polish also? The two possibilities I see are 1) you want to create a culture that has a strong and concentrated striving for academic purity because there is a huge educational (and emotional) benefit in experiencing that for four years (as Ben said). That having known that intensity gives you a strength that you’ll draw on for your whole life (as artiesdad implied in post #70). That maybe just knowing Caltech is there as sort of a touchstone is uplifting (as not quite old said).</p>
<p>The other possibility 2) comes from the other meaning of “pure” – that to include other things in the experience would infect Caltech with tainted “real world” concerns. Sully the scientific temple. This is where I start to have a problem. I hear the antagonism toward the suits (not quite old and QuantMech), and I think “Maybe the MBA’s weren’t knaves, maybe they ended up owning the company because they just added more actual value than the techies.” I hear the phrase “wonderfully na</p>
<p>^^geomom: I've worn suits for most of my career. From my perspective, I've seen or heard of tactics that I consider "underhanded," and I think it would be naive for an inventor to imagine that tactics of that sort won't be encountered. The term "knavish" goes beyond my characterization of the tactics (not that I've never seen "knavish" behavior anywhere). </p>
<p>As for value added, you could be right that the MBA's added more net value to the company, even though it would not have existed without the ideas of the founding scientist.</p>
<p>For the students, I'd say, go after the rewards that you value. It's not naive (wonderful or not) to value scientific contributions most, and to accept that there may sometimes be adverse economic consequences of that view.</p>
<h2>geomom: "If Ive got it right so far, thats a beautiful thing. But then I wonder, why this and nothing else? Why not go for polish also? The two possibilities I see are 1) you want to create a culture that has a strong and concentrated striving for academic purity because there is a huge educational (and emotional) benefit in experiencing that for four years (as Ben said). That having known that intensity gives you a strength that youll draw on for your whole life (as artiesdad implied in post #70). That maybe just knowing Caltech is there as sort of a touchstone is uplifting (as not quite old said)."</h2>
<p>The references to "purity" and Caltech are for the fact they select for academic talent and performance and nothing else--not how many community service hours, whether their father donated money, they are the son of a senator, they are an athlete, or that they founded a club and got in the newspaper. Part of the issue of purity is that a lot of the niches other elite colleges try to settle for are kind of absurd--I heard of a kid who got into Harvard after attending a clown camp. Or, alternatively, the things people do as hooks to get into colleges are faked or greatly exaggerated--for example, a "save Darfur" campaign that really is more about saving an applicant from ivy rejection. Another component to perceived purity of Caltech is their curriculum--they require all their students to take a rigorous, non-watered down (hence, pure) curriculum. That has nothing to do with being awkward or coarse in social interactions.</p>
<p>My problem with the whole "going for polish" thing is that I don't know what it means practically: how exactly does one do this anyway? Are many team-building activities effective in reality? Often they are not. Are you really going to get "polish" by osmosis by passing Al Gore's son in the hallway?</p>
<p>Also, founding a company based on a technology is different than starting say a clothing company from scratch. I've seen a 60 minutes episode on how this well-known clothing company like Abacrombie & Fitch got started up. Apparently, some guy with no money started selling clothes out of the back of his truck or something and made it grow to a multi-million dollar company. For something like this, maybe you would need to be able to be smooth to get this off the ground. But the game in starting a technical startup is different. Everything is in place for you, especially at MIT or Caltech. VC's are lined up around the block. If you come up with the technology and patent it at a university, THEY do the negotiating. Often they also recruit appropriate companies for the technology. You get like 20% of the royalties, the university gets the rest. For ideas that are not patentable, like software, still it's very easy. Don't make it harder than it is. You know, even for the guy who started the clothing company, I expect that the guy just learned as he went. It's not the sort of thing you can practice for.</p>
<p>collegealum - I think you're preaching to the choir about admissions. I doubt anyone here disagrees with you. But no, I think "purity" was referring to institutional culture, not student selection in this discussion.</p>
<p>What does polish mean? Political opinions aside: Tony Blair has it; Bill Clinton has it; George Bush does not. (Just to compare apples to apples.) There are other kinds of polish than just public speaking ability in politics. What polish is and how worthwhile it is, deserves a whole discussion of its own.</p>
<p>I agree most team-building activities suck in reality.</p>
<p>If you are happy with 1/5 of some small royalties percentage in some prepackaged deal, go for it. Running an organization IS the sort of thing you can practice for, and get better at. But I won't make it harder than it is - courage and determination play a big part, so I think you will probably do just fine at it, even on the first try.</p>
<p>Lizzardfire, my response to your lamentations ("What are you basing this off of?", "How dare you generalize?") was in the first part of my statement that you failed to quote: "...my concerns about the Caltech culture that I gather from these boards." I'm not shy about the fact that nearly all of my experience with Caltech is in one way or other derived from this board. It turns out that Caltech is actually quite a walk from MIT so I haven't visited the place myself (though I hope to). So, yes, for better or worse, you are its representative; and just as phuriku's posts have painted Chicago to be a bastion of insecurity (and by no means am I trying to "generalize" Chicago here), so will the things you say affect how Caltech is perceived. That's something you must be aware of. I concede your point about your lovably atypical of Caltech personality and will keep that in mind. You are at least one cow in England of which at least one side is brown.</p>
<p>I am unaware of any school that demonstrably teaches students to become as smooth as Blair or Clinton [and given GWB, apparently Yale doesn't guarantee polish]. I certainly see no evidence that MIT's students are especially good in this regard.</p>
<p>However, schools can demonstrably make sure that students have done proofs or seen rigorous discussions of quantum mechanics.</p>
<p>I do think that there is an institutional effect and it is related to selection as well as culture. I suspect, but cannot prove, that certain students -- particularly those fascinated by student government, marketing, the arts, management, law, as well as students raised in a particular social milieu are more likely to have or want to acquire this polish.</p>
<p>For better or worse, it doesn't seem easy [not impossible perhaps, but almost] to attract hordes of these students and require something like Core. If there were no tradeoff, MIT could do whatever it's doing well, and still make the Apostol based math class a requirement for all students. It chooses not to. Nonetheless it chooses a mix that is more Caltech-like than HYP. Geomom seems to think that mix is "better." I respectfully disagree.</p>
<p>The sort of criticisms geomom levels would be relevant if most schools were like Caltech and not the reverse. Caltech is a tiny but successful institution in a world of academic mastodons. It has a very focused, and somewhat unpopular notion of what academic life should be. I respect, teach, and have taught at schools with very different philosophies -- from elite institutions to large state schools. But I wish more schools were like Caltech than the other way around. And if that nth degree of polish is truly lacking at Tech, I see no way to get it without changing a culture that is desirable and successful in and of itself -- without any regard to whether that disadvantages its alumni in the purely commercial realm (a claim which I doubt in the first place).</p>
<p>
[quote]
I wish more schools were like Caltech than the other way around.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Me too. I have a huge amount of respect for Caltech.</p>
<p>I am really not trying to level criticisms. Really. I am trying to understand and reflect back what I am hearing. (It must be MY lack of polish.)</p>
<p>MIT advertises a teamwork approach and may try to select students for personality rather pure intellectual aptitude. I am very skeptical about whether this is a benefit educationally. It seems to be working in terms of yield. It seems to impress the parents around me. I'm just here doing my research, and I love the feedback I'm getting. :)</p>
<p>I do think you can teach polish, though, because when I got to college, the presentations kids from private prep schools could give astonished me with their sophistication. Nobody had taught me to do anything like that in my large suburban high school.</p>
<p>Comparing them is meaningless!!!</p>
<p>Geomom, four years ago when I applied to Caltech, there was a lot of emphasis in promotional material about the teamwork situation here. (What's their angle these days?) It's certainly true that the collaboration policies in most classes encourage students to work together, and that the difficulty of the assignments ensures it. Caltech has "Communication Requirement" courses that teach students scientific writing and presentation skills. Participants in the SURF program have to write proposals, progress reports, and final papers, then give final presentations. Students also have to present in lab meetings and journal clubs, and in certain majors (like biology), paper review presentations are very common assignments. I hear there's a Toastmaster's Club, but I've never been. And then there are conferences and publications...</p>
<p>Frankly I'm surprised that "teamwork" and "communication" are not stressed in advertisements for Caltech, as they apparently are for MIT. My impression of MIT was actually that there would be less teamwork and academic interaction there - it seemed more sterile and competitive. Oh well.</p>
<p>^^geomom: In your post #113, you seem to be using "polish" to describe an substantive intellectual quality, and that's not how I had been interpreting the word before. Could you elaborate, please, on what you mean by "sophistication" in the presentations, or give an example or two?</p>
<p>geomom,</p>
<p>I would not equate polish with teamwork. As snowcapk notes, the inherently collaborative nature of homework at Caltech strongly encourages teamwork. In my day, teamwork was necessary for most to even pass their courses. I would be surprised if any other college were consistently better for teamwork and collaboration than Caltech.</p>
<p>Again, another anecdote: transfers out of Caltech said that other schools were often more cutthroat than Caltech. Certainly that was my impression in graduate school elsewhere. I went to a university for my Phd that was famous for teaching teamwork in its MBA program. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to have spilled over to the PhD programs. Several classmates engaged in activity that would definitely have been honor code violations at Caltech.</p>
<p>btw geomom,</p>
<p>I'm an economist now, so I'm particularly sympathetic to "suits", MBAs, and commerce. But Caltech is a special place, and if that includes a willingness to undervalue business relative to pure research, in my view, that is a very good thing.</p>
<p>I think an analogy might be seen in an econ grad program. Many (sometimes most) PhDs will end up in consulting or business, but programs should still be designed as if all the best students will want to be professors and do research. A research-bias is part of the Caltech atmosphere even for undergrads. Arguably, it also helps make good innovators even if that's not the main goal.</p>
<p>I would also add, I say this as someone who had a very tough time at Caltech and spent a good many days cursing the requirements and the grading. I was not a prodigy nor a tech genius and had a background that would have made me a better fit at HYPS than Caltech. Yet in hindsight, I've become a strong defender of the kids from Pasadena.</p>
<p>snowcapk - I'm comparing the promotional materials they send out, the websites, and to a lesser extent the forums on CC. But testimony from actual students would be more persuasive than all that.</p>
<p>Quant - I would think polish involves two parts, one more superficial (but not necessarily trivial) and one part intellectual. The superficial part would involve physical calmness and composure and being articulate in delivery. Looking at people, connecting with an audience, knowing how to introduce yourself, and knowing a few things that would be appropriate to start a conversation. The things an actor could do.</p>
<p>A more intellectual part of polish would be the ability to converse about a variety of topics, and understand that different topics work with different people. The ability to draw people out by asking questions, to find common ground, and shared intent.</p>
<p>We just has a good discussion over dinner and couldn't resolve whether abrasiveness negates polish or abrasiveness and polish can coexist. (We got stuck on the example of Eliot Spitzer.)</p>
<p>Not quite old: All very good points, expecially that polish does not necessarily lead to good teamwork, and honor is a higher value than either. And I agree with you about the value of research-bias. Also, I'm just partial to economists.</p>
<p>I understand your position pebbles, as I am in a similar one regarding MIT. That being said, I have a slightly different idea of what being in that position means. </p>
<p>I see lines between the types of generalizations people like us can make.<br>
For example:</p>
<p>Three students say that event x is a big part of life at school y.
Reasonable generalization: event x is a big part of life at school y
This generalization is reasonable because there is no evidence that you know of that contradicts this, the students are claiming that this statement applies to the entire student body, and the claim itself is reasonable. </p>
<p>Three students say that no one likes Professor X.
Semi-Reasonable Generalization: There is a significant group of people who do not like Professor X.</p>
<p>Three students say that they don't like Professor X
Reasonable Generalization: You can't really generalize this because the students are only attempting to represent their personal opinion, not the school's. </p>
<p>Three students make posts in a condescending tone
Reasonable Generalization: Those students are *<strong><em>s.
Unreasonable Generalization: School X is full of *</em></strong>s. </p>
<p>Although everyone here represents their respective schools, we are all still people and thus fallible. If I felt the way you do about Phuriku's posts (I honestly haven't thought about it much) I'd probably attribute that to his insecurity rather than one typical of UChic students. </p>
<p>In any case, I could care less about whether Caltech is superior to MIT or not. The two places are completely different in personality. What I am interested in is improving Caltech's yield to the point where I feel like people who don't come to Caltech do so almost entirely because of the school's personality rather than prestige or PR issues. That's an optimistic goal, but I refuse to lower my sights. I'm also interested in improving Caltech in general, but that's not really the subject of this thread.</p>