<p>I'm interested in Caltech for graduate school in the field of Aeronautics. I am wondering although if Caltech grad academics are just as intense as undergrad academics. I would imagine that many grad students at caltech come from many different schools and haven't gone through the "core" of Caltech undergrad so you will likely be on the same boat as the majority of your classmates. I'm sure the students who did undergrad at Caltech will find it easier but i would just like to get some opinions on the subject. Thanks.</p>
<p>P.S. A very dumb dumb question. I come from a semester school and notice that Caltech has only a Fall, Winter, Spring and "quarter" and no summer. Wouldn't this then be a trimester system?</p>
<p>Yes, it's a trimester system.</p>
<p>Academic expectation vary by department. In physics, you have to know a lot more than core to survive (your knowlege should contain Core as a proper subset). In bio, it's usually quite alright if you don't know what Gram-Schmidt orthonormalization is. It depends heavily on the discipline, so if you get admitted, talk to the grad students in that department.</p>
<p>But that's an important point -- that the graduate experience and life is much less homogeneous than the undergraduate.</p>
<p>Thanks Ben. BTW, I happened to be perusing the forum earlier and ran into an interesting comment you made about the "fluff" philosophy being at most schools. It was quite amusing to me actually. A girl friend of mine (who I was simply friends with for eye candy purposes) started out studying Environmental Engineering at the Univ. of Puerto Rico. Not exactly an academically challenging school. She coudln't hack the elementary physics and chem classes there so she transferred into the philosphy dept. She was a pretty nice girl. But after finishing her BA, she went on to do her MS in Philosophy at Boston University. I am telling she turned into such a pretentious pseudo-intellectual bimbo as a result of her "true calling" to philosophy. She started to view my mathematics/physics training with contempt feeling she had risen above it through her "enlightening coursework". It's funny because before this debacle i had quite a bit of interest in philosphy but after my "friends" transformation i developed such a hatred for the "fluff" being taught. I would love to take a philo class that is quantitative and appealing to non pseudo-intellectual crowd.</p>