<p>Does anyone have access to past sample Caltech exams for math and physics? I'm curious about its relative difficulty</p>
<p>They’re placement exams. Looking at samples would be a bad idea. You would do yourself a disservice to “study” for them (brushing up on stuff you haven’t seen in a while is probably a good idea, but trying to cram in stuff you don’t already know is not worth it). Neither of them should be particularly difficult if you’ve had AP calc/phys, but it depends on the strength of your particular class/teacher.</p>
<p>^No, I’m not talking about placement exams. I’m looking for actual exams in a Caltech math/physics class, like the ones on MIT OCW. One of the things that concerned me was the difficulty of the courseload and the low GPA (which is scary given that Caltech students are pretty crazy smart). I need it to gauge the relative difficulty, given that many previous posts have talked about it</p>
<p>Oh man, I’m sorry. Dunno what I was thinking. It’s too early for those sorts of questions.</p>
<p>In regards to your actual question, I doubt you will be able to get hold of Core math/phys exams, as I bet they reuse questions (you’re not allowed to look at previous years exams, typically). Sometimes you are allowed to look at previous exams, sometimes not, so I’d be uncomfortable handing over an electronic copy even if I still had one. </p>
<p>In terms of course difficulty, Ph1abc is a lot like AP Phys C, but with more difficult questions than you typically see in high school. The concepts are the same, however, with the exception of special relativity, which I think is taught in Ph1b. </p>
<p>Ma1a is a proof-based calculus course which a lot of people complain about because it’s difficult if you’ve never done proof-based math (and I don’t mean those geometry proofs you do in high school). You can get a good idea of Ma1a if you look at a copy of Apostol’s calculus textbook, which is the one we use for the class.</p>
<p>Ma1b is no sweat (if you take practical track, anyway). Linear algebra. I’m bad at math (for a techer; seriously like bottom 25%) and even I did well in this one. </p>
<p>Ma1c is multivariable calculus, which should be fine if you have a decent decent background in single variable.</p>
<p>Ph2ab is quantum/thermodynamics. This was pretty difficult from me (because of the math thing) but I made it through ok.</p>
<p>Ma2ab is differential equations, probability and stats. It’s all covered very quickly and I struggled a lot. If you have background in differential equations you’ll likely have a much easier time. Same with probability and/or stats.</p>
<p>Hope this helps. Sorry again about the confusion.</p>
<p>nvm, I found it on the department’s website. thanx anyway</p>
<p>If you’re actually going to be Caltech student, you shouldn’t look at past exams without permission from the professor (it can become an honor code violation)</p>
<p>Bear in mind that if you do enroll in Caltech and take these courses, using the previous year’s exams/solutions to study will likely be considered a violation of the honor code (unless the professor says it is ok, which does happen in some courses). Simply looking at them now to determine course difficulty is probably alright, but you shouldn’t use them as a study manual to prepare for Caltech, either.</p>