<p>Yes, the Rabi's have to do summer research, and get free housing plus guaranteed research support (ie no need to apply for it).</p>
<p>The average Caltech student will do research at Caltech through the SURF program (or independently of it) during their time here, with no worry about a lack of support.</p>
<p>In addition the Rabi's get their own "clubhouse," have montlly dinners, sometimes with invited faculty, and can get summer housing on the same floor. I think they have extra advisors too, and they generally they seem to have great to the faculty.</p>
<p>The average Caltech student is a member of one of the eight houses, and has abundant opportunities to dine with and interact with the faculty, from faculty advisors, to inviting faculty to formal dinners held at the houses three times a year, to taking a faculty member out to lunch (paid for by the Caltech student government). I don't know of a Caltech student who isn't on a first-name basis with at least one or two professors, and personally, I've toured Kip Thorne and his granddaughter through some of the construction setups for our annual parties.</p>
<p>I don't know anything about astrophysics teaching there, but both Brian Greene (Elegant Universe) and Philp Kim (whose work on graphene was recently in the NYT) are both teaching full-year undergraduate classes this year.</p>
<p>Kip Thorne, John Preskill, David Politzer (recent nobel laureate), and Mike Brown (planetary scientist, discoverer of Sedna and many other KBOs) all teach classes here, from introductory freshman classes, to graduate-level classes that are well attended by undergraduates.</p>
<p>Everyone else on this board probably knows more about Caltech physics and astrohysics than I do so I won't try to make any comparisons.</p>
<p>Here are some other things that Caltech's got over Columbia in astrophysics:</p>
<p>*Mt Palomar Observatory
*Keck Observatory in Hawaii
*Upcoming 30m (TMT) Telescope
*JPL</p>
<p>(see more information about Caltech's observatories here <a href="http://www.astro.caltech.edu/observatories/%5B/url%5D">http://www.astro.caltech.edu/observatories/</a> )</p>
<p>Many average Caltech students do summer research at JPL starting in the summer after their freshman year. In their senior year, Astrophysics majors are taken on a department trip to the Keck observatory in Hawaii, to have the chance to use the equipment themselves. There's a new Astrophysics-dedicated building beginning construction right now, and Caltech will provide you with the best education in astrophysics it's possible to get. A Caltech education in astro will certainly be more rigorous and in-depth than what you can get from Columbia.</p>
<p>That said, Columbia is a great school, but it just doesn't match up to Caltech in astro.</p>