<p>"Caltech has the highest percentage of EE students who are female in the United States, if I recall correctly."</p>
<p>O RLY? My year, there's only three female EE's I believe.</p>
<p>The EE women may be high in relative terms but definitely not in absolutes ;-)</p>
<p>Might be CS I'm thinking of. Here they're one program so I get it confused.</p>
<p>That being said, Google says the study I referred to was done in 1993... so yeah, probably not that accurate anymore regardless. :x. Oh well, at least it was an attempt to rerail the thread.</p>
<p>Silver, I know at least 3 female EE's in your class.</p>
<p>Ben is absolutely spot on.</p>
<p>Indeed, it is not true that you can't major in history and do well. E.g. Gary Cox did his undergrad in history at Caltech and then got his Phd in Soc Science. He is now a very well respected authority on British political history and chair of the poli sci department of UCSD.</p>
<p>As for social diversity: While it is certainly true that at larger universities it is possible to meet people in a wider range of fields I am often struck at how field specific people's friends can be. Talking to a Yale grad, I mentioned a Yalie from the same graduating class. He said he didn't know that person because they weren't in the same major. I have also noticed at my current institution that majors tend to cluster together unless they're in frats. In contrast, the Hovses at Caltech make it easy to know people from all majors from all years.</p>
<p>An appropriate link for this thread:</p>
<p>"The only thing Caltech doesn't have that other schools do have is people majoring in English and Communications and History and Philosophy."</p>
<p>History major here!! Medieval at that.</p>
<p>And yes, I was a double-major. HOWEVER, I think it's important to point out that the other medieval history major my year at Caltech (yes, amazingly, there were two of us) was a reformed biologist and only a History major. She ended up getting into UCLA's medieval history PhD program, which is very solid (probably top 5) program in that field.</p>
<p>With a little more work on picking up language skills (especially Latin) and obviously less time spent on engineering, I like to think I could've had that outcome too.</p>
<p>Now, I lived next door to her as she ("we" is more accurate!) suffered through quantum mechanics sophomore year, but things did turn out all right for her, even as a history-only major, which I think was a decision she made in her junior year.</p>
<p>In fact her unique background had Harvard very interested in her for this research group they have that does DNA analysis of the parchment that historical documents are written on to determine where the animals came from... which to me sounded like a truly awesome opportunity--but she was adamant about doing "history only" and thus ended up at a program where she could do that.</p>
<p>It is not correct that you don't have research opportunities at Wellesley. My daughter is majoring in neuroscience, and started doing research in a professor's lab during the christmas break of her sophomore year and has continued since. The lab is well funded and doing excellent work, and most of their undergraduates do publish excellent peer reviewed papers. If you are going to visit Wellesley PM me and I'll set you up to meet my daughter (or just chat if you would like).</p>
<p>How hard is it to double major at Caltech (as Joe referred to doing)?</p>
<p>And if I'm a girl interested in majoring in computer science, does that make any difference in terms of admissions?</p>
<p>It is easier than climbing K2 and harder than running a mile in 7 minutes. </p>
<p>If you do a double major in CS and some humanities or social science option, it probably won't be too difficult; I believe many of the HSS options were designed to be double majors rather than primary majors.</p>
<p>Well if I actually got into Caltech, my other major would probably be philosophy or something english-related, anyways.</p>
<p>If your second major is in the humanities, and you actually enjoy what you're doing, I don't think it adds hugely to your workload. It adds a little bit of extra work (in particular, some time in your senior year that normally would have been "free" will probably be occupied by a senior thesis of some sort, or finishing requirements for the second major) and requires a bit more care with scheduling, but that's about it.</p>
<p>Personally I think it's a very worthwhile thing to do and I always felt that spending some time studying medieval history (as well as playing music) made me better able to deal with the engineering workload.</p>
<p>Well I find both of those subjects very enjoyable.</p>
<p>As one last query: I'm aware that most of the classes at caltech are lecture based. Are there any classes that are more discussion based (the humanities courses, for instance)? I'm wondering if caltech would be miserable for me if I hate sitting at a desk and having someone talk at me constantly. For math and science fields, I'd see that as acceptable--but for a course in philosophy or comparative literature, or whatever, it'd drive me insane.</p>
<p>So far every humanities class (philosophy and history of science type stuff) I've been in has been to some extent discussion based. Usually for part of the class the prof would talk about the reading and other things, and then the students will discuss.</p>
<p>Yeah, all of the humanities classes and a good portion of the social sciences classes are discussion-based.</p>
<p>I don't think I ever had a history class with more than 20 people in it (and that was for an <em>extremely</em> popular professor) and I had one that was just 4 of us--not counting the one-on-one thesis classes, of course.</p>