<p>Whenever people start listing "good colleges" in real-life and in movies/TV shows, they almost always seem to forget Caltech (I'm an HS student in nearby Arcadia, CA). At least that's how it seems to me. I don't know about others' experiences. My high school is pretty familiar with Caltech, especially this year because we had 8 students admitted from our school (I don't know how many of those 8 people decided to accept the offer of admission.) Because of this, I haven't really noticed how Caltech is scarcely mentioned. </p>
<p>My HS is pretty unfamiliar with Caltech also, and we’re just a few miles from Anaheim. People get it confused with Cal Poly Pomona pretty consistently…it’s my impression that Caltech in general has very little street recognition, and is only really well known among people who are familiar with the sciences, and there it is very, very, well known. I agree Caltech is probably seriously underrated in the public consciousness.</p>
<p>I don’t think Caltech would be the same if it had name recongition of the sort MIT or Harvard has. This raises the percentage of people who are attending just to study science at Caltech–and not to try to pretend to be a genius to their friends. I don’t mean to make any sweeping generalities with this statement, but I know many people who want to attend the Ivies, Stanford, and MIT just to say they went there and flaunt the prestige of their admission. My impression of Caltech is that this is much, much less common there. This is one of the more important reasons I’m turning down MIT, for the record.</p>
<p>This may be one of those instances where size counts. By the time you consider everything as a whole, MIT and Caltech rank pretty closely on quality scales. But look how many more students MIT graduates and sends out into the world each year?</p>
<p>This isn’t meant to be a criticism of what Caltech is doing. They are just more tech school boutique sized, kind of like Harvey Mudd of the Claremont School Consortium.</p>
<p>The only reason why my school is so familiar with Caltech and HMC is because 67% of our school is of Asian descent. The majority of them are interested in the sciences, which is Caltech and HMC’s strong points. Also, our city neighbors Pasadena. </p>
<p>I guess it’s just because of the small class size of Caltech…</p>
<p>From my personal experience, Caltech has much less of a name-recognition wow-factor with a lot of people than do other schools like MIT or the Ivies. Mass perception hasn’t caught up with media portrayal, it seems, as Caltech actually does get a bit of attention in the entertainment world. I don’t remember many examples, but I am often surprised at references to Caltech in movies and so forth. Most recently I saw an episode of Law & Order: SVU from the latest season where a character references Caltech along with MIT and, I think, Harvard. I guess people just don’t pay attention.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why Caltech isn’t more of a cliche smartypants school. Perhaps the community there doesn’t work as hard to be perceived as elite and exclusive? (A current student’s input would be helpful.) In any case, being less (in)famous makes Caltech more appealing.</p>
<p>Caltech seems to suffer the same problem as UChicago. The “average Joe” has probably never heard of either institution but both carry immense respect in academia and amongst university faculty.</p>
<p>Caltech is more known at my high school than I would have expected. I live in Illinois, and Caltech is better known than both WUSTL and University of Chicago.</p>
<p>Caltech is highly elite and exclusive, in that most people haven’t heard of it, and those who have tend to know exactly what kind of school it is – one where people go to be with others who share their interests, not quite a school to flaunt prestige. As another poster stated, that it doesn’t have name-recognition in a mass appeal sort of way seems a good thing for its goal: to build its own tight little community of enthusiasts in the fields it is known for. In some senses not having name-recognition to the mass population, but to the qualified science/math population is terribly elite. </p>
<p>I don’t think Caltech needs to do too much. That its applicant pool self-selects is good, and more advertising as a “smartypants” school would defeat the purpose in my eyes.</p>
<p>It’s often confused with a two-year technical college <em>facepalm</em> or Calpoly. </p>
<p>Size definitely factors into it. Not that many people get into it, and not many people graduate from it. I’m the first person from my high school to ever go to Caltech, so most students haven’t even heard of it. Tell tale sign: when they ask me why I didn’t choose to go to my state school instead. Anyway, everyone who matters knows about Caltech, and that’s all I ask for.</p>