<ol>
<li><p>I hear there's pot to be had somewhere, but I couldn't tell you where. For the most part, most of the Techers I know have a very strong anti-smoking sentiment.
Drinking's a bit different since it is legal (for those of age) and as I see it, more widely accepted (not only at Caltech) than smoking. Alcohol's easy to find nearby since even grocery stores sell it, but there is also a BevMo nearby.</p></li>
<li><p>I would like to think that most of the Caltech undergrads follow the Honor Code while they are here. I don't know if I'm just being naive. I have been here for two years and for the most part feel like it is followed. Although, what do you mean exactly by "intently breaking the Code" since the actual code is just the line that momofchris quoted above?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>
</p>
<p>I'm sorry. I was wondering if students never deliberately take advantage of other students throughout their stay at Caltech. For example, taking a look at a textbook during a take-home text. That was what I tried to ask.
But now, with a fresher head, I see that things like that, even if they do happen, would not be publicly advertised, and asking a question with possibly no answer was rather silly of me.
So, sorry again, and please disregard the fourth question :)</p>
<p>1) I'd assume swing dance is included under ballroom dance- which is a fairly active club (I know of at least two people in my house who were in it)</p>
<p>2) There is a gay-rights group on campus- it seems like it's of reasonable size, and people of differing sexual orientations are respected at Caltech. On another note, the twin-sized beds in the houses don't really fit two people. </p>
<p>3) There are a few people who smoke (cigarettes) on campus, but not many. As for other drugs, none of the people I'm around do it- but that doesn't mean it's not done. And I've never heard of the law you mention that gets you in legal trouble for not turning someone in. Technically if people were smoking pot or something like that in your room you can get in trouble for that, but I don't think I've ever seen a real police officer on campus.</p>
<p>4) As far as I can tell, students don't cheat on exams. You know what the rules are, you know there are severe consequences for breaking them, following them is the right thing to do, so you just follow them. There is minimal competition among students for grades, so that's not a pressure to cheat. There was a big anonymous survey with a good response rate a few years ago, and it confirmed that the rates of cheating are pretty low (as was expected). </p>
<p>On a side note, on most exams I've taken so far, looking at one of the course textbooks during the exam wouldn't be cheating- in fact, most of the exams are written to be open-book (which doesn't make them any easier...)</p>
<p>"There is minimal competition among students for grades, so that's not a pressure to cheat."</p>
<p>There is no pressure to get a GPA as high as possible ? I thought that GPA was important for both employment after a Bsc and for grad schools.</p>
<p>With Caltech being what it is, you don't need a perfect GPA to get into a good grad school. High GPA is still a plus, but cheating to get that extra .1 isn't really worth it.</p>
<p>4) The whole point of the honor code is not really to prevent everyone from cheating so much as providing an environment in which students don't feel pressured to cheat. At many schools (even schools that are peers to Caltech), cheating is so rampant that even good students feel that they need to cheat to not be left behind. That's certainly not the case at Caltech which several anonymous surveys have demonstrated (we have something like ~1/5 of the serious cheating that other schools see, and the BoC actually sees a decent chunk of that).</p>
<p>The truth of the matter is, though, if you really wanted to cheat by taking extra time and looking at resources on exams, you could probably get away with such things. But really, you're just cheating yourself as you won't learn the material, and you will be expected to know the material in your future classes, and so you'll be compelled to cheat there as well. Also, since the vast majority of people aren't doing cheating, I doubt most Techers would feel too good about cheating their friends/housemates/classmates.</p>
<p>Do we need to send in the TACIT form or the "Performing and Creative Arts form" for incoming freshmen if we have no intent to join these areas?</p>
<p>I'm thinking about pursuing MechE as a major and according to the Catalog I have to take 9 units from:
ACM 11, CS 1, CS 2, CS 11, EE/CS 51, Ph 20-22
I don't really have much programming experience (other than html and a bit of php) which leads me to believe that I should take CS 1. The thing is, I heard CS 1 is a horrible class and that it wasn't very useful. Would any techers help me decide on whether or not CS 1 is worth it and tell me what good alternatives are to fufilling this 9 credit requirement. Thanks!</p>
<p>I would take 3 terms of CS 11. ACM 11 might be good too, but it's new this year so I don't actually know much about it. CS 11 is meant to teach a specific programming language so you can learn a useful language as opposed to Scheme which they teach in CS 1 and is (as far as I know) rarely used.</p>
<p>EE/CS 51 might be good if you want to do robotics work. It's essentially assembly language programming. Although, it's very time consuming and considered one of the harder requirements for the EE major, so I doubt anyone would really suggest you take it.</p>
<p>I enjoyed EE/CS 51, and although it's more time consuming than most classes, it wasn't horrible... I spent probably about 10 hours a week not including lecture working on it. Basically friday night from 7 pm to whenever I finished... on bad days, 4-6am, on good days, 1-2 am plus a few hours during the week.</p>
<p>Edit: Of course, like dLo I am a EE and not a MechE so I have to take it.</p>
<p>I don't think you need to turn in the TACIT thing if you aren't interested. I didn't.</p>
<p>Can anyone comment on CS1? What's it like and why? </p>
<p>Also would taking a CS11 class with <em>very</em> basic programming knowledge be doable since it says that CS1 is a strongly recommended prerequisite for CS11?</p>
<p>Can anyone comment on CS1? What's it like and why? </p>
<p>Also would taking a CS11 class with <em>very</em> basic programming knowledge be doable since it says that CS1 is a strongly recommended prerequisite for CS11?</p>
<p>i had a quick question - when exactly do we take the physics placement exam once we get there? is it the weekend before classes start or something? thanks in advance</p>
<p>Pwnz, My S took CS1 last year. He enjoyed it. The prof was good. And he found learning Scheme interesting, he was in fact explaining Scheme to me last night. S had no real programming knowledge beyond figuring out how to program his calculator to create games. He then took CS2 and while he liked it, he was clueless on how to even begin the first few problem sets as one needed to know Java in order to do them. But he said the TA's were great in helping him get started and by the third problem set he could do the problems on his own. If you have more questions about CS1 pm me and I can give you my S's email and you can ask him directly.</p>
<p>What does it take for a Techer to get in the top graduate schools ?</p>
<p>I read on the undergraduate admission pages, in 2006, a bit more than 50 were able to chose among those top schools.</p>
<p>Good research experience and publications, as our GPA's tend to be on the lower side. That said, Caltech has a ton of amazing research opportunities. And the rest of the grad school applicants probably went to schools of comparable quality depending on their research interests. But it'd probably be better if an upperclassmen or alum who's actually witnessed the process firsthand answer your question.</p>
<p>what things might increase my chance of getting a SURF? i have heard that taking ch3a in the first or second terms help, but i was planning on doing that in my 3rd term. i am taking bi2 my first term and ch10 my second term hopefully (those are the current research seminar classes for bio and chem) and i was planning on taking bi8/9. do any of these factors help? thanks</p>
<p>What field/topics do you want to do a SURF in?</p>
<p>I would say, just start talking to professors early. E-mail ones that you are interested in and ask them what type of skills would be useful for a SURF in their lab.</p>
<p>CS1 is essentially high school AP computer science with more labwork and a slightly deeper and broader coverage of topics. </p>
<p>As for SURFs, they're extremely easy to get working in laboratories, no prior experience necessary. It's also very feasible for analytical research as long as you find the right professor and have a decent idea for a topic.</p>