caltech for premed, prelaw, and wallstreet

<p>I know Caltech isn't the place to go for premed (and esp not prelaw), but everyone i've talked to has said you don't come here to become a doctor, lawyer, or go into finance not because these professional schools and wallstreet don't accept caltech students, but mostly because no one really ends up being interested in finance, becoming a lawyer, or a practicing doctor. Students keep saying even if you come here with aspirations of being a lawyer or doctor, you eventually give up on that because you realize all the math and physics you've learned will be useless in medicine or law, and you end up feeling your time is wasted if you don't go into science and research. </p>

<p>Can anyone comment on this? does caltech's curriculum/environment really sway people to going into R&D and engineering fields (even if one was not interested in these professions at all when entering caltech) ?</p>

<p>Also, does anyone have rough stats for med school and law school apps? do most people (discluding all md/phd programs) get into at least a 1 or 2 of professional schools they applied to? Thanks</p>

<p>Med schools, law schools, and Wall Street will accept Caltech students. There is a different culture at Caltech, so that in itself probably pushes people to not explore these options. </p>

<p>Law school admission scores (GPA/LSAT) are on-line for each school, and aren’t likely to be different for Caltech. For med school, my feeling is that if you get a 3.3/4.0 you can get into a state medical school. However, with the same effort or less at Harvard you could get a 4.0/4.0 and go to a top 5 med school. Wall Street will accept Caltech people–they like people with quantitative skills. It gives you “street cred” if you will.</p>

<p>Plenty of people major in physics or math and end up being a doctor, lawyer, or going to law street. The fact people do it less at Caltech is due to the unusual grade deflation as an R&D culture. </p>

<p>In short, if you can do at Caltech, there is nothing stopping you from doing these things.</p>

<p>I don’t think Caltech is all that great of a place if you don’t want to do research. One of the main selling points is the accessibility and quality of undergraduate research opportunities. Professors are mostly (with a non-trivial number of exceptions) much more interested in their research than teaching. This creates a very intense and supportive environment for a budding research scientist, but I would question if the sacrifice in teaching quality would be worth it for someone who did not benefit from the research. That said, as far as I can tell, the grade deflation is largely a myth. I believe Caltech’s mean GPA is around 3.4 (with a higher median), similar to Harvard’s 3.5. It is possible that Caltech students put in more effort on average, although I don’t know that for a fact.</p>

<p>^ ya, I heard the median grade is a 3.5 according to prefrosh webinar. To graduate with honors, I believe u need to get above a 3.5 which would place you in the top 50th percentile.</p>

<p>^^It’s not a myth. At the very least, there used to be serious grade deflation in the past.</p>

<p>If 3.5 is the avg. GPA, then something must have drastically changed.</p>

<p>I’ve seen the trends and talked to a lot of caltech alumni. There has definitely been improvement since the last few years. I woudn’t be surprised if it was up at 3.5, but last i heard it was still 3.3-3.4</p>

<p>You can definitely work on Wallstreet if you come to Caltech. It’s not uncommon to major in either math or physics plus Business & Economics management and to pursue this option. I have two friends (graduating this year) who are doing this, and I personally know 4-5 more alumni who are currently in NYC in finance-related jobs.</p>

<p>@collegealum314
I found this, it says that the median GPA is 3.5, but the mean GPA may be somewhere close to this assuming a normal grade distribution
<a href=“http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/uploads/File/general/MedScholars2010withImages.pdf[/url]”>http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/uploads/File/general/MedScholars2010withImages.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;