<p>My son has been accepted by both colleges and would like to pursue engineering, most probably mechanical engineering. He has not received any merit based financial aid from either college. We do not qualify for need based financial aid.</p>
<p>Sincerely appreciate any opinions, ideas, suggestions etc.</p>
<p>Is there any advantage of going to MIT, if he wants to get exposure to some business courses in his junior/senior year?</p>
<p>Thank you very much.</p>
<p>Congratulations for your son's achievement. Both Caltech and MIT are fine institute and either one could provide excellent education in mechanical engineering. It is nice to have such choices.</p>
<p>But in order to differentiate what each school would offer, you and your son may want to go over separately MIT Bulletin and Caltech Catalog, and design a preliminary four years schedule for each case, according to the school's requirement and your son's interest. You could then find out academically which institute would provide a better fit and which institute is more exciting from your son's own perspective.</p>
<p>You may also want to attend pre-frosh weekend for both campus to experience the campus life first hand. Also look into potential summer opportunities on each campus which may round up your son's education. Upper-class merit scholarship is awarded at Caltech but not at MIT.</p>
<p>Caltech has business classes too- although not as strong of a program as MIT's management school, they are there. If you really wanted to, you could try to pick apart each school's course offerings, but I think that would be a waste of your time. </p>
<p>Instead, I would focus on the different environments at each school. Go to both pre-frosh weekends if you can, and pick based on your impressions of the campus, campus life, and how well you like each school. Also, you will have a chance to talk to students at each school who are currently studying mechanical engineering, and get their thoughts and impressions, which will be a much more accurate representation of the program than the course schedules.</p>
<p>Thanks for your response.</p>
<p>Visiting on Prefrosh weekends - my son thinks that the colleges would be on their "best behaviour" and not their normal selves - so how much weight can you place on these visits?</p>
<p>It's definitely true that colleges are going to be different during pre-frosh weekend than during a normal weekend. If you want, you can visit at a time not during pre-frosh weekend and see what it's like. However, pre-frosh weekends are still reflective of the overall personality of the school, and it's a good chance to get to talk to a variety of students at the school. They're also lots of fun to go to- can't forget that point.</p>
<p>The advantage of prefrosh weekend is that they plan lots of informational seminars and panels to give you more information and opinions. During another time you'll get more of an opinion of the energy of the place, but it will be harder to get information, and unless you're proactive about approaching people, you'll talk to far far fewer techers. Even though the atmosphere during prefrosh is a lot more fun than it usually is, it's very easy to walk around and talk to techers (and they're far more likely to approach you to talk) and the students themselves won't sugar coat it. In fact, you'll almost assuredly run into people during prefrosh weekend that will try to dissuade you from coming, which you won't during a normal visit.</p>
<p>Caltech has a Business Economics and Management major and some good business classes if your son is interested in that. We also have to take 16 terms of humanities and social sciences, most of which can be social sciences if he wants. It's a good excuse to take a lot of business, economics, law, political science, or whatever random topic you want to learn about. </p>
<p>For mechanical engineering, both MIT and Caltech are probably going to have very similar requirements, classes, prestige, and teaching styles. The only real academic difference is going to be in the core classes. As an engineer at Caltech, your son would still have to take quantum mechanics and proof-based calculus, neither of which are likely to apply directly to the work he's going to do. Learning how to do proofs, however, would teach him thinking and problem-solving skills that he might not learn otherwise and knowing quantum mechanics, even if it's not his field, will help him be a well-rounded scientist and engineer. If your son has a general interest in science and wants to be around similar people, then Caltech might be right for him. </p>
<p>Every Caltech student has to take at least five terms of physics, five terms of math (starting after calculus,) two terms of chemistry (designed to be a good general introduction to chemistry for people who have already aced the AP exam,) a course on a specific topic in biology (currently biophysics of viruses,) a chemistry lab, another freshman lab (usually in physics or applied physics,) and a "menu" course in geology, astrophysics, energy science, environmental engineering, or information and logic. If this sounds like a big annoyance to get in the way of taking engineering classes, then he might want to go to MIT instead. If he likes all types of science, doesn't mind feeling like he's triple-majoring in math, physics, and his major of choice, and would probably take these classes regardless of where he went, then it's nice being able to make a physics joke and have everyone in the room get it. ;) Actually, the real advantage is that the entire freshman class will be taking the same core classes at the same time. Since the problem sets are all open-collaboration (and encourage collaboration), they can make some of the problems hard enough that most people won't be able to do them on their own. This encourages a lot of learning through (consistently extremely smart!) peers.</p>
<p>More importantly, though, are the non-academic factors. This is where Caltech and MIT actually differ a lot (and why I chose Caltech over MIT despite MIT being just as strong in my field of interest):</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Weather. It's warm and sunny out pretty much every day at Caltech. Just taking a stroll around campus and looking at all the beautiful flowers, squirrels scampering around, and turtles always makes me feel better. I thought MIT was cold, depressing, and impersonal. Maybe some people are into that kind of thing though.</p></li>
<li><p>Honor code. It's taken very seriously here and actually works due to the high amount of trust amongst the small student body. Even though you get to take pretty much all tests home, take then when you want, time yourself, and enforce the restrictions (what amount of material you are allowed to consult) on yourself, there is still very little cheating. I've never heard of any student-on-student crime. The campus is very safe and your fellow undergraduates will usually look out for you. The school in general is very collaborative and non-cutthroat. </p></li>
<li><p>The administration usually makes a huge effort to be as personal as they can be. They usually are very open to undergraduates and trust us more than we could ever ask to be trusted. :D Heck, President Chameau was just cooking up omelettes recently for people at midnight during finals week! President Chameau regularly goes to sports events and other student events. Tom Mannion will give you amazing free food and sponsor fun events! The school is also usually willing to fund any awesome ideas you have. If you have an idea for a club, it's easy to get money for it. If you have an idea for building something cool, you can usually get Caltech to buy some of the materials for you. There's also not nearly as much red-tape as you might see at a bigger school. It's simple to just drop my an administrator's office and just get something sorted out. Most of them don't even bite! :D</p></li>
<li><p>Small student body. There are so many advantages to this I can't even name most of them. Caltech is very rare in the fact that they are a huge name in research and yet have a very small undergraduate body. If you want to do research, you can. It's as simple as being willing to email a number of professors until you find one that has an opening. Most students do SURFs over at least one of the summers they are here. The student body is small enough that I can recognize most of the undergraduates here (and often know what House they're in.) The student body is also extremely friendly. Just have your son stand around looking confused with a campus map upside down (telltale prefroshling signals) and some undergraduates will probably offer to help him out or let him follow them around to their classes and whatnot.</p></li>
<li><p>The House System. It is awesome. It basically gives you an instant hundred people who want to be your friend and are probably extremely compatible with you. The Houses usually have fun activities and are the basis of most peoples' social lives. They're kind of a mixture of really nerdy coed frats and the Harry Potter houses. Most of them also have really fun "family style" dinners every weekday. They all have their unique traditions and all have very different personalities (though a non-Techer would probably describe all of them as some variation of "nerdy.")</p></li>
<li><p>Sports. If your son really cares about his school winning lots of sports games, and table tennis is not his sport of choice, Caltech is not his kind of school. If he wants to join a sports team, he can, regardless of whether or not he has ever played it before in his life. Sure, we don't do an athletic recruiting at all, and many of our teams consistently lose, but you also get the opportunity to try out pretty much whatever you want. No one here does sports for the glory of winning but for having fun, relaxing with friends, and getting some exercise.</p></li>
<li><p>Student body in general. We're not as diverse as MIT. We don't do the affirmative action thing or athletic recruiting so much, so our gender ratio sucks, we are bad at sports, and we're very white/asian. On the other hand, everyone who goes here is extremely smart and no one is ever treated like they got in just because of affirmative action. We have a lot of respect for each other (and most of us feel like we're the stupidest person here! :D) Someone who actually graduates with only a humanities major is a rare creature at Caltech, not so at MIT. We pretty much all love math and physics (even the bio majors and the engineers.) In general, we're quite a bit nerdier than MIT. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. If your son has a weird phobia of nerds, this is probably the last place in the world he would want to be. Just because we're nerdy doesn't mean we can't have a lot of fun though!</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I cannot overstate how important it is for your son to go the prefrosh weekend (or spend a couple days with students some other time.) While Techers tend to have more fun than usual during prefrosh weekend, keep in mind that it is right at the start of midterms week, which is the most stressful one in the term. ;) The kind of fun that the average Caltech has is probably very different from the kind of fun the average MIT student has.</p>
<p>you really can't go wrong with either school</p>
<p>Oh, yes you can. You can go very very wrong. Not in quality, but in environment. This decision certainly shouldn't be taken lightly.</p>
<p>Agreed. In terms of academic prestige, you can't go wrong, it's true. But the schools are still very different. I'm really really glad I visited MIT and realized that I would probably be a lot less happy there than at Caltech. I can imagine some types of people would be unhappy at Caltech too.</p>
<p>I'm surprised that a lot of people get into both Caltech and MIT, actually, since the environments are so different. Isn't part of the adcom's job to determine if a school is right for a certain personality?</p>
<p>There's a lot about a student's personality that an application doesn't show. The student should be able to figure out the school better than the school the student. ;) There is still a lot of overlap between the type of student MIT is looking for and the type that Caltech is looking for though.</p>
<p>Unduly,
Your post was fantastic. You should start a blog.
I think there are many kids who would overlap and be just fine at both schools. I also like the fact that the first 2 terms at Caltech are P/F, which gives students a chance to adjust. The Core exposes people to many different fields and allows one to chose a major later on.</p>
<p>I absolutely agree. The more I hear about CT the more sure I am it sounds amazing. I definitely plan to visit. Houses sound amazing. My counselor wants me to go to MIT basically because it's more prestigious according to her, but bah. It definitely feels like she's wrong about fit for me.</p>
<p>When I did CPW at MIT I had a real sense that the students I met were trying to "sell" the school to me (of course the admissions office was, but that's to be expected). While the Caltech admissions office also "sold" the school during Prefrosh Weekend, of course, Caltech students themselves didn't sugarcoat and told me the good along with the bad--in fact to be honest I think they over-exaggerated the bad, in retrospect!</p>
<p>Anyway, I ended up at Caltech.</p>
<p>And I believe you can take business classes and even be a business major (or "business, economics, and management") at Caltech now.</p>
<p>I'd like to concur in the awesomeness of llama's post. You just wrote everything I intended to write plus some large constant of information that you conveyed better than I ever could ;-). Rockin'!</p>
<p>Thank you all for your suggestions.</p>
<p>Who would tend to be more entrepreneurial among engineering students? Those at Caltech or those at MIT?</p>
<p>Here is a piece of information about number of patents from various schools which may be somewhat relevant.</p>
<p>WOW. I can only speak for personal experience. I know one Caltech prof in engineering who has a profitable business. My S has worked for several local companies headed by Caltech alumni. I think your S will find the entrepreneurial spirit alive and thriving in either school.</p>
<p>Inverse, what way is you talented offspring heading?</p>
<p>Bookworm, my DD2 will visit Caltech next week (during her spring break), to finalize a paper with her research advisor . We will also go to the seminar day in May, hopefully to find a research topic for her pre-frosh SURF. She is still uncertain about her concentration, but given Caltech environment, I think she will develop her capacity eventually.</p>