Caltech Question Thread

<p>thanks omgninja for your reply..</p>

<p>could you elaborate a little more on question 54
54)a)Are there certain majors at caltech that are looked at with much more respect than others(by prospective employers or grad schools) or are all majors considered to be the best in the country(wrt engineering and science)?</p>

<p>b)How much of a quality difference is there between engineering and sciences at caltech-major difference or minor?</p>

<p>56)Double major might be a tad bit difficult to handle..what is the best in economics that i can do without having to doble major?</p>

<p>57)How hard is it to double major in EE + eco/Maths + eco?</p>

<p>58)Do 1st and 2nd term grades count at all towards the gpa(considering they are only pass/fail with shadow grades given for the 2nd term)?</p>

<p>Also, more opinions on 52,53,54 and 55 are welcome..
thanks..</p>

<p>Double majoring EE + anything else is usually quite difficult, mostly in terms of the time it takes. I do know an individual doing it, and doing it well, but I wouldn't call it easy.</p>

<p>57) Math/econ is definitely a lot more doable since math is one of the more requirement-light majors. Of course, if you have a strong math background, passing out of Ma 1 would really make doing this much much easier. You're also probably going to want to manipulate your core HSS classes so maximize the amount of multiple requirements you satisfy - take only four as humanities classes, two as non-econ social science classes (one introductory and one advanced,) and the other six as econ or BEM.</p>

<p>58) No, they don't. Even if you fail them.</p>

<p>
[quote]

Double majoring EE + anything else is usually quite difficult, mostly in terms of the time it takes. I do know an individual doing it, and doing it well, but I wouldn't call it easy.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Apparently someone is double majoring in EE and bio. Which makes for some pretty crazy courseload.</p>

<p>That would be the individual I know. :)</p>

<p>I should preface this question by saying Caltech sounds like a great place to me, and I'm enrolled for 2011, but what's up with yield? For that matter, what exactly was the yield this year? Do other students know something I don't, or are they just drawn to other places (MIT, Harvard) for the greater name recognition?</p>

<p>I think there are several possible reasons for the difference in yield between Caltech and its peer institutions. While Caltech has many traits that some people think are fantastic, others may disagree. Specifically, while there are people that love the small campus, quirky atmosphere, and academic rigor, there are probably people who feel that these exact traits are negatives. It's also not really "safe" for students who are unwilling to put forth a significant amount of effort towards learning math and science. This being the case, it certainly does not have as broad appeal as larger universities. Perhaps a lot of students apply before they research the specifics of the different schools? Name recognition may also be a factor (maybe even a large one; hell if I know), but the truth is that Caltech is actually different from other comparable institutions in very real ways. </p>

<p>While it's likely that other students know something you don't, it is probably not the case that what they know is relevant to your situation. example:
Suppose I didn't like science, but rather was interested in accounting. I know school X has a comparative advantage in that area, and enroll there. How does this affect you? It doesn't.</p>

<p>So, here's my opinion. I think the primary reason is prestige--Caltech is very well-known in science and engineering but outside of those fields it doesn't have the name recognition of MIT or Harvard. I think many students do not take the time to research Caltech after getting into one of these "more prestigious" schools, and so don't have a great idea of what Caltech is like. I volunteered in the admissions office to call admitted students, and you'd be surprised how little most of them knew about Caltech--many I talked to knew nothing about the house system, the honor code, or the core curriculum. </p>

<p>Of the students who make it through that cut, there are a variety of reasons not to attend Caltech. Too small, not enough humanities majors, not enough girls, 'weird' social environment, really hard, etc.</p>

<p>I'd really like to see our yield improve, but part of me is glad that it is low. Why? Caltech is NOT for everyone. If you're going to college for the prestige, for the jobs you'll get after, to have a good time... Caltech is NOT the right place. Of course, you'll get these things at Caltech, but you can get them at other places with much less work / misery. </p>

<p>So then why come to Caltech at all? For a certain kind of student--the student who is truly passionate about math/science/engineering and doesn't just do it because he/she is good at it--the student who wants to realize his/her limits--the student who wants to be surrounded by people who share his/her motivation and talent--Caltech is perfect. In terms of our environment, there really is no other place like Caltech. (I'll probably elaborate more on this later).</p>

<p>Sometimes I think Caltech emphasizes the hardwork over the comraderie, and scares prospective students/parents from enrolling. Any top school is hARD, especially math/ eng/physics/ etc majors.</p>

<p>Here's an article that Tokenadult posted in Parents' forum, with Caltech featured prominently:
<a href="http://post.economics.harvard.edu/fa...refranking.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://post.economics.harvard.edu/fa...refranking.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Link doesn't work bookworm :(</p>

<p>taken from almost last page about MJ resigning from MIT (in case link doesn't work).</p>

<p>After edit: the revealed preferences study</p>

<p><a href="http://post.economics.harvard.edu/fa...refranking.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://post.economics.harvard.edu/fa...refranking.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>reminds us that a college can boost yield by practicing "strategic admission," that is by admitting students who were not admitted by any more appealing colleges. It's hard to say when independent researchers will next have access to enough data to detect this pattern in the practice of a college admission office.</p>

<p>If this doesn't work, go to post #1673 in the thread</p>

<p>Working</a> link.</p>

<p>Interesting article - I must be being dense, but how was Caltech ranked higher than MIT, if they say Caltech ranking was primarily based on comparing MIT to other schools, (due to a lack of cross-admits with Caltech and other top schools except MIT because of self-selection). I thought MIT won most cross-admit battles with Caltech.
It also struck me that the authors were wrong that Caltech was ranked too high because of self-selection. It may be true that the typical top student would pick lower ranked schools over Caltech more often, but that doesn't seem especially relevant, because the only people who are going to care where Caltech is in the table are people who have been admitted to Caltech, who are also part of the self-selected group who favor Caltech. So, while the pool of people that created Caltech's high ranking may be self-selected, and different from the typical top high school student, they are representative of the people who care, so it seems legitimate to me. Have I shown myself to be an utter moron unworthy of my acceptance letter?</p>

<p>Some parts of the study relevant to Caltech (which they spelled incorrectly):</p>

<p>
[quote]
For instance, the top row shows that, if a student were choosing between Harvard and California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech), her probability of matriculating at Harvard is predicted to be 59 percent. If the student were choosing between Harvard and Wellesley (the college listed ten places below Harvard), her probability of matriculating at Harvard is predicted to be 93 percent.

[/quote]

[quote]
The results for Cal Tech are somewhat problematic. Because students self-select into applying to Cal Tech based on an orientation toward math and science, Cal Tech's pool of admittees overlaps only slightly with that of most other institutions, except for MIT, with which Cal Tech has substantial overlap. MIT's pool, on the other hand, overlaps substantially with other top schools. These facts have two implications. First, Cal Tech is ranked largely through MIT's ranking vis-a-vis other institutions. It depends to an unusual degree on indirect tournaments. Second, much more than any other institution in the top twenty, Cal Tech draws upon a self-selected group of applicants. We address the problem of self-selection into specialty schools in a later section. For now, we merely flag the issue and note that a few institutions, most obviously Cal Tech, may have a ranking positively affected by self-selection.

[/quote]

[quote]
A Comparison of the Revealed Preference Ranking of Colleges and Rankings Based on the Crude Admissions and Matriculation Rates
National Rank Based On:
Revealed Preference | Admissions Rate | Matriculation Rate
Harvard 1 4 139
Cal Tech 2 9 854
Yale 3 12 309
M IT 4 13 422
Stanford 5 7 297
Princeton 6 5 266
Brown 7 14 561
Columbia 8 6 438
Amherst 9 19 916
Dartmouth 10 20 647
W ellesley 11 23 492
U Penn 12 104 794
U Notre Dame 13 58 459
Swarthmore 14 28 1016
Cornell 15 45 649
Georgetown 16 22 703
Rice 17 25 996
W illiams 18 29 797
Duke 19 32 859
U Virginia 20 76 63

[/quote]
</p>

<p>

They don't seem to provide the actual numbers they got for Caltech vs. MIT head-to-head, but Table 3 shows that Caltech has a 56% chance of winning against Yale, which has a 59% chance of winning against MIT. Table 4 shows that in 81% of draws between MIT and Caltech, Caltech is ranked higher than MIT. This seems to contradict all of the numbers I've ever seen which show that MIT wins over Caltech in cross admit battles, and the paper seems to indicate that it likely determined the Caltech/Yale number based off of the MIT/Yale number. Your confusion is certainly understandable (I'm confused myself.)</p>

<p>The point of the paper is to demonstrating how to construct a revealed preference ranking of universities (i.e. the main point is the econometric theory). The analysis in the paper is merely a demonstration on a small data set. Due to random chance they picked up a sample in which Caltech was winning over MIT. In reality, MIT wins over Caltech in cross-admit battles.</p>

<p>Oh, right - that makes sense. It would be interesting to see it done with a larger sample. Could the dip in SAT scores at Princeton possibly be due to the gap between what it takes for a URM to get in, vs what they generally admit for non URM students? The dip could be where there were fewer URM students with that high of scores, but they still weren't accepting large numbers of non-URM students. Or am I over-estimating the differences both in SATs and admittance rates for URM students? I don't really have a concept of what the difference is, but if it were large enough, I would expect a distribution like that with a hump where the product of admittance rate and score frequency for the minority students was maximized.</p>

<p>Question:
59) I am a newly admitted transfer student (ChemE option). Through this forum, I heard many people said ChemE is one of the hardest (seriously, I was scared) because of the number of units they have to complete for graduation. But when I searched Caltech website and 06-07 Catalog for "Typical Course Schedule" in each options, I found that many other options, such as math, physics, and biology require greater amount of units than ChemE.</p>

<p>For instance, math and physics (scroll to the bottom of the page):
<a href="http://www.math.caltech.edu/general/bsmath.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.math.caltech.edu/general/bsmath.html&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.pma.caltech.edu/GSR/physugrad.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.pma.caltech.edu/GSR/physugrad.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>ChemE: <a href="http://www.che.caltech.edu/undergrad_prog/TypicalSched.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.che.caltech.edu/undergrad_prog/TypicalSched.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The question is: Could you Techers please explain to this newbie why people STILL regard ChemE is one of the hardest option at Caltech because of the number of units they have to take??, even tough it turns out that other options I mentioned above require roughly same amount of units.</p>

<p>Thank you Techers!</p>

<p>Question
60) Any ChemE Techers in this forum?</p>

<p>"I found that many other options, such as math, physics, and biology require greater amount of units than ChemE."</p>

<p>Are you not looking at the schedules very closely??? You do know that "electives" and "humanities" != major requirements right?</p>

<p>Edit: I'm not going to add up the units, but just look at the number of required courses ChemE has to take vs. any other major.</p>