<p>Do Stanford and Cal Tech have the same team spirit that MIT has? Or is there more competition between fellow students?</p>
<p>Caltech is incredibly collaborative and noncompetitive. People pretty much only compete with themselves, and I can't imagine how I'd get through my massive homework load without collaborating with other people.</p>
<p>I've found Caltech to feel a bit more competitive than what I experienced at CMU, though I think that's because you've got those students chasing the A+ while the rest of us are just trying to scrape by.</p>
<p>You're also a grad student. I don't know how many students you would consider to be "chasing the A+", but from my point of view they're an often ostracized minority. As a sophomore struggling to get through my Quantum Mech set right now, it's hard to imagine my sleep deprived peers that I've been working with for the last 6 hours as being A+ chasing tools.</p>
<p>Trust me, grad students only care about getting our B. ;)</p>
<p>I'm stuck doing quantum and solid state right now, and I couldn't care less about my assignments because they're doing is keeping me from spending time in the lab on my candidacy project.</p>
<p>Caltech just seems to have a very stratified student body with the students that get As almost effortlessly, and then everyone else doing crazy amounts of work to try and keep their heads above the water. When I was at CMU most of us were on a more level playing field, so it just felt like cooperation was a lot more natural and getting an A was achievable for everyone in any class with enough work. I don't think I ever could have studied enough for ACM 95/100a in order to have gotten an A in that class, though.</p>
<p>Your judgment about the stratification is definitely true, but I don't think that makes Caltech more competitive. Those who get As easily are just as likely to help the rest of us as anyone else. I'm also a sophomore who is definitely not getting an A in ACM 95, but my friends with top scores in the class routinely explain concepts to me and help me out whenever needed. But it's also true that getting an A is not achievable for a lot of people, regardless of effort.</p>
<p>I guess that's one of the things that frustrates me most at Caltech. I have some classes where I feel that no matter how much time I put into it, I'll never master it in the way they want me to. So I wind up giving up knowing that I'm going to get a B anyway and start to only care about getting the homeworks done. Learning for learning's sake seems to have gone by the wayside over just doing the frustratingly difficult assignments.</p>
<p>Keep in mind I'm also a little behind the curve at Caltech since I'm taking graduate courses without having had the pre-reqs. I had never done a proof-based math course (being a rather applied engineer, I didn't see much of a point...), never taken a non-basic quantum class, and all that junk. It was a bit of a hard hit jumping into ACM100 after not taking a math class for four years and not having any of the pre-reqs for, well, everything except for the MS and APh105 series.</p>