<p>I'm trying to decide whether my first choice college is Caltech or MIT.</p>
<p>I've wanted to go to MIT ever since I was in elementary school, but Caltech is getting more and more appealing. Nonetheless, to me they seem like the same school on opposite coasts.</p>
<p>I don't care about location, size, student faculty ratio, or that "it feels like home." I'm talking about facilities, education, and concrete aspects that have to do with how much I will actually learn.</p>
<p>There are several other threads that discuss this- looking them up would be a good idea. In terms of what you will learn, for any real practical purpose they'll be the same. If you have a specific thing, then that can be discussed, but in general, they'll be fairly similar. Ultimately, to decide between the two you should visit- they have very different feels and you might like one a lot better than the other.</p>
<p>In any case, it's true that you shouldn't pick a favorite to fall in love with before you're accepted to both. (If you're only accepted to one, it will be obvious which to fall in love with.)</p>
<p>If there are issues that haven't come up in previous Caltech-vs.-MIT threads, we'd be happy to discuss those -- and there certainly are various things. So read to see what's been said before and then come back if things remain unclear.</p>
<p>In my opinion the most important difference is simply the environment--in other words, how a person fits in. The only way you'll find out where you fit better is to visit ;-)</p>
<p>Unless you have very good reasons to, you ought not neglect the "location, size, student faculty ratio, or that 'it feels like home.'" factors. I admit that I shared this perspective before choosing which school I wanted to attend, but my experiences since then (not the least including talking to hs friends who went to other school environments) have shown me that this was a ad move. Thankfully I do love the environment at Caltech, but because of my cavalier attitude towards this I might well have ended up at a place where I didn't. So don't fall into the trap of thinking that you just want to go to the 'best' place on some sort of abstract academic scale... you'll be living at a particular place surrounded by particular people, which is just as important.</p>
<p>Frankly, when you're looking at schools of the caliber of Caltech and MIT, how much you will learn depends far far more on YOU than on the school you choose. I agree with what others have said that you really should be far more concerned with all those things you say you don't care about.</p>
<p>I agree that it might be just as well not to make one a favorite before you know whether you'll even have a choice. My impression is that the house/hovse system at Caltech is quite different from MIT and might make more difference than you think. But my son agrees with you he says he doesn't care, and he's looked at very different places and still says he doesn't care. He's pretty adaptable though I think he'd be miserable at a real party school. I do think the different departments at the two schools have different strengths. Coursework is likely to be substantially the same, but research foci of the professor could make one place more interesting for you than another.</p>
<p>I'm choosing for next year and it just seems to me that most of the Caltech students or alum I've talked to are a bit more quirky and different. I really like that. Just my .02 =)</p>
<p>Personally I would choose MIT any day (and in fact I was accepted EA) but to quote an MIT student who was teaching an SAT class, "I visited CalTech and the difference between there and here is that people there actually smile and here everyone is like 'I want to die!'" She meant it jokingl of course.
During an overnight visit, some students were discussing the merits of CalTech and they aid that they thought it was more theoretical in is approach, so it's up to you-apply to both.</p>
<p>As a Junior, I have my heart set on Pasadena :p but logically ....
if you are going to either school (especially CALTECH) you are probably
going to go into a field requiring graduate study. </p>
<p>Choose the other school for Graduate study and you get to
experience both schools...?</p>
<p>...and then there is post doctoral work...:cool:</p>
<p>That's not exactly true. A little more than half of undergrads go on to grad school. There are still many areas where you don't need grad school to get a good job.</p>
<p>One thing that is not as important at the UG level but that permeates down for those looking for research work: MIT only grants tenure to ~ half of its new profs whereas Caltech supposedly has a tenure spot for every prof hired into the tenure track. As an UG, this basically means that the profs feel less pressure to constantly publish (which UG aren't as efficient for doing compared to grad students/postdocs).</p>
<p>Go to Caltech if you imagine yourself doing math problem sets Friday and Saturday nights in 2 years. If you envision yourself partying, you're probably better off elsewhere. If you are SURE you want to go to grad school, come here. If you are sure you want to work right after college, coming here is probably overkill (and will damage your GPA in the process compared to other schools).</p>
<p>One thing that struck me when I went to an MIT info session last fall was that nearly all the alumni interviewers that night were in finance. Now that's probably partly an artifact of being in the NY area, and partly an artifact of MIT's business program. Nevertheless many of the alumni specifically said they'd majored in the sciences. It was striking enough to make me go hmmm.</p>
<p>When I went to Caltech info session in October, all but two alumni worked on Wall Street or attended Graduate School, majoring in business-related subjects.
So, I assume location played a role.</p>
<p>But it brings me to something that's been torturing me since that session, and since I've read alumni</a> stories on Caltech's web-site.</p>
<p>Those Caltech graduates that don't go on to become scientists or engineers, why do they do that? Especially Physics or ChemEng majors that jump into business world - where did THEIR "passion" go?
Maybe Caltech was so hard these people lost their interest in their favorite subject? But no, it cannot be true - many graduates DO get PhD's in what they liked all along.
Then, maybe these people lied on their applications? But why would they major in Physics or ChemEng, and not in Math?</p>
<p>It seems like a betrayal to me.</p>
<p>Now, I do understand it is very childish and immature of me to think that way, that personal circumstances could have played a major role, that very few people do that, but nevertheless...</p>
<p>College is more than a series of courses which a student must take and pass. You will likely be exposed to a much wider variety of people and ideas than you have previously encountered. Many college students discover interests they had never previously heard of, or new ways to apply the information they have learned. </p>
<p>Furthermore, my impression is that the most important part of the classroom portion of a Caltech education is not the information gained in lectures and homework assignments. Rather, it is the development of a rigorous, but flexible, method of thinking. At Caltech, you’ll do math proofs instead of merely producing answers to math problems, as is the case at many other colleges. Why? Not because professors want to provide you with busy work to limit your social opportunities, but because they want you to learn how to think.</p>
<p>People who develop good thinking skills can apply them to many different areas. Alumni who work in law or business haven’t abandoned earlier interests, just found different ways to apply those interests. Because of their superb thinking skills, these alumni are in high demand by many corporations in a wide variety of jobs. </p>
<p>Be patient with older people. Over the years, they have likely discovered many new opportunities and have had interests evolve and mutate several times. Very few people have precisely the same interests at 60 as they had at 16.</p>