<p>Can some of the current Caltech students give an estimate of how difficult it is to get into one of the top graduate programs (HMPS) for Caltech UGs? What percentage of those pursuing graduate school would you say are accepted to these top schools, and what is a respectable undergraduate GPA? Do graduate schools take Caltech's "zero grade inflation" policy into account? Would I be in a better position for graduate school if I instead went to Princeton, or MIT?</p>
<p>I am also curious about how difficult it may be to transfer out to one of the top schools. If I end up at Caltech and find that I want a more humanities based education or it's too difficult, how easily would I be able to transfer to say, Stanford or Harvard?</p>
<p>This comes up so many times that there should be a FAQ on this.</p>
<p>You need to distinguish between professional school -- med school and law school -- and graduate school -- PhD programs.</p>
<p>The former (especially Med school) are very wedded to minimum GPAs. If you get past the initial screens, your GPA may be taken more seriously over other schools. But if you have say, a 3.0, you're likely to get rejected by most med schools even with perfect MCATs. Law school is a little less so, but still a problem. </p>
<p>The greatest discounting of GPAs is seen in applications to PhD programs. For these, letters of recommendation from good people, plus work on research as an undergrad really matter. It is here that Caltech profs really make a difference. They can get people into grad schools with GPAs that would be unacceptable from most other schools. When I was in charge of our PhD admissions we looked harder at Tech applicants even with weak GPAs. The deciding factor is what professors said about the students and why they did poorly. Med schools won't give you this chance.</p>
<p>In general a high GPA from Tech will impress people even in comparison to most schools. But a low GPA will be a disadvantage but not always crippling.</p>
<p>yea, i actually have the same questions that Farsighted was asking.</p>
<p>like, if caltech ends up not working for you, how hard is it to transfer to another top university?</p>
<p>also, how tough is it to get into a top grad school if your gpa is around "average" at caltech? like, does somebody have a percentage of students that get into a top grad school?</p>
<p>another thing i noticed is that caltech has a relatively low 4 year graduation rate, its somewhere around 80%. does anybody know why its so low?</p>
<p>There is a famous example of someone who didn't do well freshman year but got into Duke (yet decided to come back to Caltech after a year at Duke... liked the social life better here.) I don't know how typical that is. Too small a sample size. While Caltech's difficulty would probably be accounted for in transfer decisions, you shouldn't expect to get into Harvard or Stanford or MIT after not doing well at Caltech. A lot of transfer applicants those schools get get are Cornell / slightly- sub-Ivy students with straight A+'s.</p>
<p>The top graduate schools are very competitive. While a 4.0 from Caltech, all else equal, sends a stronger signal than a 4.0 from most peer institutions, it's a matter of luck and recommendations how you'll fare with a 3.0 or below. A 4.0 from Harvard would probably be better (but isn't all that easy to get either!!).</p>
<p>As NQO points out, what swings it for students whose GPA's aren't sky-high is often an impressive research paper ("so what if he has a 3.2? he has a Nature paper! we have junior faculty who don't have that!") or a strong recommendation from a well-known professor. Caltech affords you a lot more opportunties to do those things than peer schools, so this might factor into your thinking.</p>
<p>In answer to your final question: the graduation rate is low because Caltech is hard.</p>
<p>Note: the 80% figure is the four-year graduation rate. Almost 90% graduate in 6 years or less.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies NotQuiteOld and Ben. Ben, do you know the average GPAs at Caltech and how many people go on to earn PhD's?</p>
<p>And, hopefully it wont come to it, but say I simply do not like the Caltech atmosphere yet do considerably well (Also, how does transfer work on a pass/fail record?). Would I be able to transfer out to one of the top schools? Do you know of anyone who has managed this?</p>
<p>I guess this is extremely important for me to know as I've read the posts by Serj T, who dropped out of Caltech and ended up going to UConn. I have a few top institutions to pick from now, so I dont want to make a mistake where I would end up at a state school.</p>
<p>Look: Here's the truth. From a cold-blooded, career-maximizing perspective, it rarely makes sense to go to Caltech (unless you're as successful as Ben G). The work is hard, grades are low, and no school fully corrects for that. But the personal rewards -- for the right kind of person -- of meeting the Caltech challenge are many. I say this as someone with a mixed record during my years at "The Institute".</p>
<p>I spend time on these forums because I value my Caltech experience highly and want to encourage the best students to go to Tech as well. As a professor who has seen many schools and many different students, I have to say that Caltech is really unique. And I am not happy with many of the trends in higher education today. Caltech bucks the trend towards softballing the academic experience and is proudly meritocratic. Part of that attitude is an atmosphere where there is a serious, non-zero risk of costly failure.</p>
<p>Some people will not go to Caltech because it's either not their cup of tea, or because they only care about a low risk approach to professional school. Fine. They shouldn't go. </p>
<p>But for the right boys and girls, it's a really delightful trial by fire. And frankly, it's one of the few places where you'll be forced (underline "forced") to grow up intellectually and confront what you really care about. Graduates will feel that they are arguably part of the tightest knit "Frat" in the world. Not everyone will have even heard of Tech, but those who know the secret "handshake" will smile when they meet their fellow survivors.</p>
Average GPA is something like 3.0, with average graduating GPA of 3.2. I believe Caltech has the highest PhD rate in the nation (according to the Harvey Mudd forums at least) at roughly 40 percent.</p>
<p>If you do reasonably well but don't like the atmosphere, your chances of transferring to a peer institution are strong. If you were good enough to get into X as a high school student, doing academically well at Caltech for a few terms boosts your stock enough that you would be competitive for X even in the harder transfer pool.</p>
<p>I know of one example relevant to your situation: a girl I know didn't enjoy the academic boot camp freshman year, and her grades were mixed -- probably about half A's and B's, with one or two C's. She told me she applied to Stanford as a transfer and got in, but decided to stay here at Caltech.</p>
<p>One more thing: I'm on UASH, the committee that deals with people who have academic problems. The overwhelming reason that people's grades fall below a B average is serious personal troubles or huge conflicting time commitments that leave little time for schoolwork. While not everyone who tries hard can get straight A's, most people who try hard CAN get a 3.0 or so. (By the way, this was decidedly not true in NQO's time. You can see, Caltech is getting a little soft. If we weren't, none of you cautious children would come! :-P )</p>
<p>Med schools are actually not quite as draconian as NQO suggests. I have heard (from someone who is now at WashU) that Caltech has the biggest "multiplier" for GPA's. I'm not so suprised about filtering in general, though.</p>
<p>The rest is pretty accurate though, and I imagine it's how I'll feel on June 16th... :)</p>