<p>On my recent visit to Caltech, I found out that Caltech is reducing the core to 1 year instead of 1.5, but I am not sure what changes are being made. If someone knows, please post.</p>
<p>Last time I checked no final decisions had been made about the changes to the core, but I have been out of the loop for a little while. It shouldn’t matter for new students–if anything, the changes will be improvements to the current system. Of course, there will be people that will disagree with me on this, but in any case the changing of core signifies a change in practice, not in motivation–Caltech is still focused on creating top scientists. Part of that includes updating your curriculum from time to time.</p>
<p>I doubt the new core will apply to you. There are still a lot of things that need to be worked out and I don’t think we’re far enough along in the planning to implement the new core for next year.</p>
<p>I would be entering fall 2012. I wonder why my tour guide implied it was a done deal.</p>
<p>Well, it may apply for you in that case. It’s a done deal in that some changes to Core WILL happen. On the other hand, there’s a big difference between the changes that we want to make and the changes that are feasible to make in the next year. Changing Core involves a lot of non-trivial logistical problems, so it’s not going to happen overnight.</p>
<p>they seem to be very close to finalizing, but of course no one’s sure. I think the gist of it would be, frosh hums would no longer be p/f, you can elect what type of 5th term material you would like to learn for math/phys (4th term is still the same), and the addition of new sections for chemistry that would allow for students with weaker chem backgrounds to catch up. there was also some talk of making the introductory programming course part of core, not sure if that’s still up though. the impression i got is that they definitely want to implement it asap, hopefully next year, as it seems most of the changes involve adding sophomore classes (specialized phys and math courses for different options).</p>