CS at Caltech

Colleges and Universities A-Z California Institute of Technology
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<p>Forgive me if I've missed a post that discussed this topic.</p>

<p>I'm an international (Greek) student, got accepted during EA and for a while I've been meaning to get some insider academic information about CS (Computer Science) at Caltech - reading the forums got me covered (and happy!) lifestyle-wise I believe :)</p>

<p>Right now I'm generally more into "theoretical" CS: Algorithms, Data Structures and generally anything in the problem-solving spirit and level of the IOI / ACM-ICPC (hopefully you can make out the acronyms). Will I find relevant classes? On the "practical" side, I'm also interested in having opportunities for summer internships at companies. Does Caltech expose me to a wide variety of them? (to as large as, say, Google)</p>

<p>Furthermore, I very much like to mix pretty much all I do with math to the degree of even considering majoring in math instead. Can I feel comfortable mixing the two (to a reasonable extent) in Caltech?</p>

<p>And a couple of other questions:</p>

<p>Is there an academics-related reason most olympiad-people generally prefer MIT to Caltech?</p>

<p>I'm not a big Biology fan and would take Chemistry over Mechanics any day, any time; supposing I pick Caltech, am I doomed to be unhappy for the entire core duration?</p>

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<p>There is one core biology class, so it shouldn't be too big of an issue.</p>

<p>There is plenty of theoretical CS at Caltech and it is very strong. MIT has a much bigger and more applied program, so it is natural that people with more diverse CS interests would tend to go there. But many of the theory profs at Caltech in CS are second to none in the world (Mani Chandy and Kitaev just to take two random examples) and studying with them would make you a great theorist.</p>

<p>Caltech students can get Google internships -- with good grades I don't think it would be too difficult. </p>

<p>Math/CS is a common mix at Caltech and courses like Ma/CS 6, Ma/CS 117, Ma/CS 126, Ma/CS 129, CS 21, etc. are designed expressly for this purpose (and there are many more). So I think you would be happy here.</p>