Caltech vs MIT for engineering

Colleges and Universities A-Z California Institute of Technology
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<p>Yeah, sakky, I am saying it. Caltech is, for the average student, much harder than MIT. The graduation rate is higher for MIT students because they don't have to take the courses that account for most dropouts here (quantum mechanics and proof-based analysis and linear algebra). MIT cutting off the math and physics requirements at year of easier courses means weaker students can move sooner into easier majors with nicer grading. Simple relationship. Easier overall coursework on average = more graduates on average. </p>

<p>Further, if MIT required the same courses we do and had the same standards for passing, their graduation would be less than ours because they have more affirmative action beneficiaries who are academically marginal.</p>

<p>Is that straight enough for you?</p>

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<p>Dude, I find your comment offending. How can you justify that the AA admits at MIT are academically marginal? Are you implying an utmost importance of SAT scores in Admissions? I really know great minority admits who've gotten into MIT and are majoring in Mathematics/Physics there (and I hope that wouldn't count as an academically marginal major for you).</p>

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<p>I don't claim that all MIT affirmative action admits are academically marginal. Some are geniuses. But it is an uncontroversial fact that there are more academically marginal AA admits than marginal white male admits, only because the unfortunate socioeconomic history forces colleges to dip a bit lower into the minority pool to get a sufficient number of minority admits.</p>

<p>(My phrasing was a bit unfortunate... what I meant was "a larger number of marginal students who are affirmative action beneficiaries" as opposed to "a larger number of affirmative action beneficiaries, all of whom are academically marginal." Similarly, saying that "they have a larger number of blue dogs who are happy" would mean that they have a lot of happy blue dogs, not that they have a lot of blue dogs, all of whom are happy. Anyway, apologies for the confusion.)</p>

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<p>wouldnt that imply that easier departments have a large proportion of AA admits</p>

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<p>I think the more logical reason is that MIT has more majors, everyone does what they want to do no need to take quantum mech if your an econ or business major. Could there possibly be a good reason why a business major would need to take quantum mechanics.Caltech has less choices if you decide you dont want to be a math major your out of luck and proabably wont graduate and hence the lower graduation rate. It has nothing to do with difficulty, 8 and 18 majors will take the same courses at either school.</p>

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Could there possibly be a good reason why a business major would need to take quantum mechanics.

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Yes. Doing quantum mechanics makes you smarter, and better qualified for complicated business analysis too. Just ask the Wall Street firms who hire so many physics majors over business majors.</p>

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8 and 18 majors will take the same courses at either school.

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I've certainly never denied that, and have been pointing it out for some time (although in truth the math and physics majors require a few more courses at Caltech, but I'll concede the point for the sake of argument.)</p>

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It has nothing to do with difficulty

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But this, of course, is unintelligible nonsense. Caltech, with harder courses taken by the average student (even the econ major takes quantum, which he wouldn't at MIT), is on average a harder school*. That difficulty is due partly to harder core requirements, although it comes from other things too. The increased difficulty accounts for lower graduation rate.</p>

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<p>*Another way to put all this: two students of the same caliber and major will, on average, have to do tougher coursework at Caltech than MIT. It's true that for some majors, like math and physics, the work is just as tough at both places, that is, MIT = Caltech. But for a variety of other majors, the requirements at MIT are acknowledged to be less stringent than those at Caltech, that is MIT < Caltech, since, for instance, a bio major at MIT takes the same bio courses she would have taken here, but no quantum physics. There are very few fields in which MIT makes you work harder than Caltech. </p>

<p>So, on average, Caltech is harder.</p>

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<p>The difficulty is imposed at Caltech by core requirements,the student could have the same level of difficulty at either school but in one its a choice (kind of depending on major) and in another its imposed. Not every major is going to need quantum mechanics or analysis(they would probably goan more from other courses). Im a physics major and will take those classes as req and just because they are interesting but I still dont see why all majors would need to take them and I dont believe they make you any smarter(you might gain a better understanding of probabilty in quantum mech but you could get the same understanding in a probability course which business majors have to take as req)</p>

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<p>First, we weren't arguing where the difficulty of Caltech comes from, just that it's there. Also: being able to run off to an easy major to avoid the hardest courses, if the going gets tough, doesn't make things easier? That's like saying a long-distance runner who has a car escort to take him home whenever he wants has it just as hard as the guy who runs alone through the forest for three hours with only his own endurance to rely on. As you can see, it doesn't pass the laugh test.</p>

<p><a href="you%20might%20gain%20a%20better%20understanding%20of%20probabilty%20in%20quantum%20mech%20but%20you%20could%20get%20the%20same%20understanding%20in%20a%20probability%20course%20which%20business%20majors%20have%20to%20take%20as%20req">quote</a>

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<p>Well, one thing is for sure. Anybody who says this has definitely never actually taken a quantum statistics course and a business statistics course (I say this as a math/econ major), or talked to typical business vs. physics graduates. Made for an excellent laugh though.</p>

<p>But seriously, your manifest a particular persistent confusion. I agree that an econ major might not <em>need</em> quantum mechanics and proof-based analysis. My claim is: it is undeniable that someone who has made it through those courses without failing -- regardless of major -- is guaranteed to be at or above a certain (very high) intelligence cutoff. Somebody who took easier classes is a wildcard.</p>

<p>The powerful signal of having overcome very difficult stuff gives the Caltech diploma a great deal of value in terms of communicating truly extraordinary intelligence and tenacity. If someone is a Caltech grad, you know immediately they made it through that stuff. That just isn't true at MIT, where someone can take the (easy) basic math and physics and then spend the rest of the time in photography classes.</p>

<p>Being at a very hard place, where everybody has to have it in them to make it through truly demanding material, is not for everyone, but it makes Caltech an amazing place for some of us.</p>

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<p>Just a few random observations:</p>

<p>Whenever I hear Ben and others bragging about how tough CalTech is on its students, it makes me think of the movie Animal House...especially that scene where Kevin Bacon is being paddled as part of a Fraternity initiation. Poor Kevin keeps yelling "Thank you sir, may I have another" , as a sadistic character named Doug Neidermeyer whacks him over and over again with a heavy paddle. Moral of the story: A good education doesn't have to be painful and humilating, just look at MIT. </p>

<p>Regarding the RIGOR INDEX: I can find no independent, third party that researches RIGOR and ranks all the Engineering Schools accordingly. It seems to be purely an invention of CalTech students. Not surprisingly, CalTech is always #1 on the rigor index. Despite their shortcomings on RIGOR, MIT and a few other schools are usually ranked ahead of CalTech in most engineering disciplines. </p>

<p>Regarding Econ majors being required to take Quantum Physics: come on, that requirement is just plain stupid. Wharton, Harvard and all the great business schools don't require Quantum Physics and somehow keep churning out great Economists, Analysts and Business Managers. When you give a kid a hammer, everything looks like a nail. At a small, inbred physics school, I guess everything looks like a physics problem. It's an incredibly parochial way of looking at things. Maybe CalTech doesn't have enough high level Econ courses and so has to dip into the Engineering to create enough credit hours for graduation? Anyway, it would be silly to go to CalTech for Econ--is CalTech even ranked in the top 500 for Econ?</p>

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<p>"My claim is: it is undeniable that someone who has made it through those courses without failing -- regardless of major -- is guaranteed to be at or above a certain (very high) intelligence cutoff"</p>

<p>I think people have different niches, someone who can pass those classes isnt by default a great economist or biolgist, those courses show he/she's a good physicist or mathematician but not necessarily good at their major.</p>

<p>" When you give a kid a hammer, everything looks like a nail."</p>

<p>LOL,</p>

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<p>Caltech is ranked in the top 20 for Econ (USNWR), having been seriously started up that department 15 years ago (we go fast, whee). If you ask anyone (say, at MIT) they will confirm that it is generally agreed in the econ community that Caltech has among the best game theorists and microeconomists anywhere in the world. (Colin Camerer, Peter Ordeshook, etc.)</p>

<p>Incidentally, more Nobel Prize winners in economics during the last 20 years studied math or physics as undergraduates than studied economics. Just goes to show how little you know about the fields you heap your worldly CC wisdom upon. You do know a lot about Kevin Bacon films, for which I applaud you.</p>

<p>(This is harder to document than the Nobel claim, but it's also true that high-level investment banks vastly prefer to hire out of math and physics programs for their quantitative business and economics departments. They almost never hire economists for that, because most undergraduate economists are very weak mathematicians, unless they come out of Caltech. You can confirm this by placing a call to a recruiter at any top five firm.)</p>

<p>And by the way, who said we were talking about engineering? You seem to persistently think this, whereas most students at Caltech are scientists. Nobody ranks ahead of Caltech in physics, and we're top three in all the hard sciences. I'm not going to fight the engineering battles, and I tell most engineers at prefrosh to go to MIT or Stanford. Maybe you're one of those people very far outside the quantitative world who classifies anyone in a quantitative profession as an engineer? (I adore the short-order dinner cook at Avery House who tells me to persevere so that I can be a "math engineer" when I grow up.)</p>

<p>As for "may I have another" -- yeah, we look like masochists from the outside. We like brutally hard, seemingly impossible work. It makes us feel like we deserve the grades and the diploma, plus we just get pleasure out of difficulty. Not many people can understand the Kenyan marathoners who log 20 miles a day, either. The good thing is that most of us don't care whether you understand ;-).</p>

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<p>Top 20? Hmmm! Tell me how highly you regard the 20th ranked Physics program...especially when you find it so easy to demean the higher rated programs at Stanford Berkeley and MIT. </p>

<p>Undoubtedly Math is important to Econ, banking etc. No one would argue that. It's a different situation for Quantum Mechanics, which is what that comment was about....Unless you can find an Economist, Nobel Prize or not, who attributes their success to Quantum rather than calc and other math. </p>

<p>Ben, you obviously have a lot of brains and determination. I hope that you will continue to persevere.</p>

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<p>Well, thank you for your kind words joemama. </p>

<p>I wish what you said about math were true. To my chagrin, investment firms seem to prefer (all else equal) phys to math candidates, just because physicists have more expertise in <em>modeling</em> phenomena. So quite a few investment bankers out there would probably owe at least their hiring to a physics major. Quantum mechanics isn't as useless as you think, even to bankers.</p>

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<p>What Ben means (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the material of Quantum Mechanics is not important to Econ majors, but the difficulty of the class trains their mind. It's like weight training for athletes. Athletes never have to lift weights in their sports (except wieght lifting of course) but it trains their muscles for their specific sports. Quantum Mechancis and Caltech's slew of advanced math and physics trains the brain for other subjects.</p>

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<p>Well said, dLo!</p>

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<p>As I said before, my comment (if you care to read back and decide to play fair) was specific to Quantum, not the more general world of physics. Physics is not just Quantum Mechanics; i should hardly have to instruct someone from CalTech in this matter. </p>

<p>I looked up some of the recent nobel prize winners in Econ, they were varied sample of math, econ or physics. I'm certain the IB community hires the same way.</p>

<p>dlo: that's a stretch. But if you persevere, someday you will be a certificated math engineer fellow and your parents (and the cookman)will be proud.</p>

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<p>Well, this conversation took an interesting turn. </p>

<p>I like dlo's comment, for I think it captures a lot of the spirit of the discussion.</p>

<p>
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What Ben means (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the material of Quantum Mechanics is not important to Econ majors, but the difficulty of the class trains their mind. It's like weight training for athletes. Athletes never have to lift weights in their sports (except wieght lifting of course) but it trains their muscles for their specific sports. Quantum Mechancis and Caltech's slew of advanced math and physics trains the brain for other subjects.

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<p>I can accept the weight-training analogy. In fact, I think it is a quite useful analogy. One could say that you are using a difficult class to train your mind. </p>

<p>The last 10 posts or so have been about the economics community, useful skills to be in business/banking, and so forth. I would invoke another one of Ben Golub's posts.</p>

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Doing quantum mechanics makes you smarter, and better qualified for complicated business analysis too.

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<p>I might buy some of that. When you couch education in that fashion, that is noncontroversial.</p>

<p>The problem is that Caltech doesn't just use those classes to train students' minds. There 's a subtle, yet tremendously important point to be made. Training people's minds is only one purpose. As Ben Golub has himself admitted, it seems that one of the other purposes of those classes is, basically, to flunk certain people out. For example, consider the quote of:</p>

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The graduation rate is higher for MIT students because they don't have to take the courses that account for most dropouts here (quantum mechanics and proof-based analysis and linear algebra).

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<p>Aha, so the truth comes out. The purpose of the class is not just to make some students stronger. It's also to make bad students to drop out. It's not just weight training - it's also about weeding. </p>

<p>For example, let's say that I go to Caltech and I want to major in economics, yet I flunk out because I can't pass QM despite the fact that economists don't really need to know QM. Now, again, is it useful for economists to know QM from a "mind-training" aspect? Of course it is. Do they need to know it? I don't think so. After all, I would argue that the majority of all Economics Nobel Prize winners never took QM. Yet here you are, potentially denying somebody an economics degree because he can't handle QM, when the fact is, QM is not necessary to become a good economist. Useful but not necessary. </p>

<p>Hence, I have no problem in recommending that econ students take QM. That's fine. But to make the granting of the economics degree contingent upon passing QM - you go too far. </p>

<p>However, all of this discussion misses the basic point that I've been making which is that I think there has not been a proper focus on those Caltech students who don't do well. We can talk about all those Caltech students who have done very well and that's great for them. But what about the ones who don't? What about the ones who come and really struggle? The prevailing attitude seems to be that they shouldn't have chosen Caltech in the first place, and so they're stupid and deserve to get screwed. That's a very flip and cold attitude. That's like looking at a bunch of maimed and dead soldiers and saying, well, they shouldn't have chosen to join the army and so they're stupid and they deserve to be maimed and killed. I think we have to be a little more compassionate than that.</p>

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<p>sakky: Looks like you found a "smoking gun" to win your long-running arguement. With that kind of determination and persistence you might make a good engineer or, even, an economist.</p>

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<p>I never said or implied that the <em>purpose</em> of the QM requirements is to flunk certain people out. That's just a side effect.</p>

<p>Since you like war analogies. Suppose a general says "The accidental civilian casualty rate is lower for the other generals because they don't attack enemy positions as aggressively as I do."</p>

<p>(To make the analogy explicit "casualty rate" = "dropout rate"; "attack enemy positions" = "require hard courses")</p>

<p>Has he admitted that part of his <em>purpose</em> is killing innocents? Of course not! He's just admitted his other purposes (fighting hard) have unfortunate side effects. We also admit that our purposes (training minds rigorously) have unfortunate side effects (losing the weak).</p>

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<p>Whether it's a side effect or a purpose of a particular class, what does it matter? At the end of the day, the result is the same - people are flunking out because of that class. And you have to ask the question whether that's a good thing or not. </p>

<p>To extend your war analogy, so just because a general does not make it an explicit goal to kill innocents, so are you saying that killing innocents is now perfectly fine? So when you go to the battlefield afterwards and you count up the dead bodies of innocents, well, hey, as long as the general didn't make it an express PURPOSE to kill them, then it doesn't matter that all those innocents died , right? All these innocents die, and you just shrug your shoulders and say "who cares", right? </p>

<p>What I'm saying is that your attitude, Ben Golub, is easy to have when you're not one of the 'dead innocents'. It's easy to say that your school should have a lot of rigor when you're one of the ones that is doing well. What if you were not doing well? Sorry to be blunt, Ben Golub, but I think they'd find all your chest-thumping machismo about the rigor of Caltech to be grotesque.</p>

<p>Here's what I want you to do, Ben Golub. I would like you to find a Caltech student who has either just bombed their exams and is on the verge of being thrown out, or has already been thrown out of Caltech, and I want you to tell him that it's great that Caltech is so rigorous and that those who don't do well here were foolish to have come, and all the other stuff you've said on CC. If you really believe all the things you've been saying here, then you should have no problem in saying it to those people, right? Go ahead, do it. I would just advise you to make sure your medical insurance is up to date, because they're probably going to want to kick your tail.</p>