<p>I have some question about CalTech's Graduate Admissions, basically what does it take to get into CalTech's Masters or PhD program in EE?</p>
<p>From what I have read for undergraduates CalTech seems to be looking for almost straight A's and frowns upon even A-'s. Is this true for people applying for graduate work at CalTech? What is a competitive GPA from a state school for someone applying for graduate studies?</p>
<p>How much emphasis is their on research done as a undergraduate? For example I go to a state school and research opportunities are limited, but I have been able to get jobs (Engineering related) during breaks, does CalTech care about that? Or does is it more like, "well great you can work in the industry, but any monkey can do that, show us you are capable of doing research"?</p>
<p>How are recommendations weighed? From what I have heard if admissions can't recognize the name of the recommender (as in famous in that field) the admissions people look at where the person works (low tier school or high tier) to weight how much importance to give the recommendation. So are people that go to state schools at a disadvantage here because of their status of their schools on the academic ladder?</p>
<p>Also, CalTech's Undergraduate program is widely seen as very rigorous so much so that getting a degree is somewhat of a gamble (sorry if I am mischaracterizing it, this is just what I have heard/read). Is the same true of graduate level work?</p>
<p>As far as schools that graduate students come from, are most from CalTech or MIT or other top universities? Or does CalTech also take students from lower tier schools? Does anyone have any statistics showing the breakdown of type of school graduate students come from?</p>
<p>Graduate admissions are done by department --- the professors in the department pick the graduate students. I honestly have no idea how the EE process works -- what GPA they look for, how they look at recs, etc. Perhaps someone in engineering can share some of what they've learned by osmosis.</p>
<p>As for the Caltech rigor, it certainly is a part of studying anything but I think that most graduate students have ht emotivation and so forth that it's not a question whether they can graduate or not if thye work at it (though there are exceptions). There is certainly more grumbling about the workload among undergrads.</p>
<p>The grad students I know are mostly from top foreign universities (IIT, etc.), top American schools (MIT, Berkeley, etc.), and good schools lower on the ladder. Roughly in that order. I have met very impressive students who didn't go anywhere fancy as undergrads, so I don't think the undergraduate institution is that big of a deal if you're a good student.</p>
<p>Hopefully someone from engineering can give more specific answers relating to the questions you ask.</p>
<p>As Ben Golub said, graduate admission process is normally done by the respective departments. In EE, if a professor like you (your resume, research, specialization, etc), then you're likely to be accepted regardless of your GPA. If you are aiming for Masters then your GPA plays a really big role. The average graduate students' GPA is around 3.8/4.0. I believe GPA 3.6 or 4.5 is often acceptable if you come from universities like MIT or Caltech itself. But for most schools, you are expected to have GPA above 3.75.</p>
<p>PhD work at Caltech is relatively more relax than its undergrad study, but notice that Masters program is as hard as the undergraduate, it may be harder if you don't have a strong background in the related field. </p>
<p>Most graduate students at Caltech are from Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT and Harvard. But there are many students too come from Cornell, WUSTL, etc, and overseas universities.</p>
<p>And BTW, it's hard to get A at Caltech EE, an average of A- in EE would make you a cream student :). The graduate students, however, are expected to get at least A-.</p>
<p>Do we have any statistics on the schools Caltech undergrads go for grad programs? I am curious to know as to how many of them choose to stay in Caltech itself?</p>
<p>There aren’t any statistics as far as I’m aware, but a decent number of undergrads do stick around. There’s a possibility of a type of “failing in” where you are a great student, but wind up with a low GPA. They’ll be able to get into Caltech due to a professor they worked for pulling them in, but they won’t be able to get into many other grad schools.</p>
<p>Not aware of any statistics myself, either; among the students I personally know about the most popular schools were MIT (plurality), Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, UCLA, and CMU. Most of the CS majors I knew went straight into industry but of the ones that decided to pursue a Ph.D., two went to Stanford, two went to CMU, and one went to U. Mich.</p>
<p>I generally wouldn’t recommend Caltech for pre-meds but of the few that I know (not all from the same class):</p>
<p>UCSD (at least a few) [part of the Medical Scholars program]
Harvard (3)
Stanford (1)
Vanderbilt (1)</p>
<p>I also knew of five undergraduates that stayed at Caltech (again, not all from the same class). Two of them were of the type mentioned by RacinReaver - they didn’t do as well as they’d hoped in graduate school admissions but were able to get into Caltech due to their positive reputations among their professors. The other three had admissions offers from other top-5 schools and decided on Caltech in the end.</p>
<p>In their website, Caltech’s EE graduate school ask applicant to choose a research department and a professor whose research areas are of interest to the applicant. Any tips here besides choosing the field I like (Signal Processing). Should I contact the professors via email first to make sure if they want to take me in or should I not.</p>
<p>Are there any stats available on the graduate students that were admitted to the Caltech EE Program in 2013 and 2014 - how many and where they came from?</p>
<p>I read somewhere only students who have a masters degree from Caltech get admitted into EE caltech. Is it true?? How do I apply for PhD? I already have a masters in power electronics from a reputed Indian university … Do i need to do it again in order to do PhD?</p>