<p>For those of you that visited Caltech during Prefrosh Weekend, would you mind sharing with us (both prefrosh that didn't go and Caltech students) your experiences? What did you like? What did you NOT like? Was it useful? etc</p>
<p>Students that end up matriculating say the PFW was why they decided to come, but we never actually hear from people that didn't like it, and I think this information would be extremely useful to make future PFWs even better.</p>
<p>i really liked prefrosh weekend, except my prefrosh was silly and went on college confidential the whole time instead of going to classes or hanging out with people. (if my prefrosh is reading this, hi)</p>
<p>she's going to mit</p>
<p>but yeah, the prefrosh were cool and the events were fun ESPECIALLY THE LN2 ICE CREAM DELICIOUS</p>
<p>edit: oh yeah things i didn't like, well they could've advertised some of the better core classes and steered prefrosh away from the crappy ones. oh and there was a misprint on the sheet, so the prefrosh sitting next to me in math 1c thought he was going to an aero class</p>
<p>Going to Prefrosh weekend is very important - and was for my D. After attending, she decided Caltech was not for her and is very happy at a top LAC. Nothing bad about Caltech, just the fit was not a good one for her. Better she found that out before she attended.</p>
<p>I LOVED Prefrosh Weekend, although I wonder if going to hard math classes all day and doing crazy stuff all night was really the best way to critically evaluate Caltech and compare it to other schools. I suppose it's a good sign that I enjoyed it so much, though? I sort of wish I had visited at some other time, so that I could have seen campus when it wasn't being converted into a massive party. </p>
<p>Negatives? I agree that the class schedule we were given was insufficient. I had certain personal issues regarding house assignment and food, but they weren't really Caltech's fault. Also, you all should really tone down the drinking around prefrosh, although I've heard that this is just as bad at other schools. </p>
<p>Incidentally, I find the secrecy regarding the houses to be slightly absurd, but this doesn't seem likely to change.</p>
<p>Einsteinprime--if you think drinking at Caltech is bad you're in for a big surprise. I would bet that we have the lowest drinking rates by far of any non-religious University in the US. </p>
<p>I'm considered a relatively heavy drinker in my house and I usually have one or fewer beers/glasses of wine a week, and I drink enough to become inebriated only once every two months or less. Of course, this statistic varies from house to house, but I doubt that this is a huge statistical anomaly for Caltech. (I am over the age of 21 for anyone who is not aware of this fact).</p>
<p>If anything, I'd like to see social, light (legal) drinking increase at Caltech. I think far too many people are scared to try things out of their comfort zone, and alcohol is one of those things. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see people getting drunk or abusing alcohol, but consuming alcohol is not only an interesting experience but also relatively common in the real world. I'd much rather learn my limits in a safe environment where there is a huge support net than out in the corporate world when I'm at a dinner with my boss.</p>
<p>Far too many people refuse to try alcohol here because they are afraid of it. If you're allergic to alcohol, or your religion bars you from drinking, or you are at high risk for alcoholism, or you hate the taste of alcohol, or you are underage and concerned with legal consequences, fine. There are many great reasons not to drink. But if I had a nickel for all of the stupid, knee-jerk, illogical reasons I've heard here for not drinking, I'd be rich. I'll hear people argue about how alcohol will cause them to lose all control. You ask them: Have you ever had alcohol? No. Do your parents drink? Yes. Do they lose control? No. Why do you think you would lose control? Well... because... I want to talk about something else now... Another related problem is that the people who don't usually have a good idea of why they hold their beliefs regarding alcohol are often the quickest to judge others for doing it. </p>
<p>This is a huge pet peeve for me, if it wasn't incredibly obvious.</p>
<p>As for you finding the secrecy regarding the houses absurd, that's totally fine with me. You don't really understand the house system, and you won't be able to until you've spent at least a few months here. It works well in my opinion, and we operate in a way that ensures it continues to work well.</p>
<p>Edit: It's worth noting that if I were at virtually any other school I'd be arguing for students to drink less. I'm just in a unique situation here.</p>
<p>Second Edit: Worth noting that I speak only for myself and for no one else here. My opinion (if it wasn't clear) is just that and does not in any way represent the feelings of other students.</p>
<p>
Also, you all should really tone down the drinking around prefrosh, although I've heard that this is just as bad at other schools.
Drinking varies widely between houses and social groups. For example, lizzardfire and I have had different experiences regarding alcohol. A good number of people I know drink more than he does, and aren't necessarily considered heavy drinkers for it either. Also bear in mind that we tend to have less work to do during prefrosh weekend since it is the first week back, so for some people it is a chance to party/drink before the term starts getting bad.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Incidentally, I find the secrecy regarding the houses to be slightly absurd, but this doesn't seem likely to change.
[/quote]
I agree that the secrecy is somewhat annoying, but it's really only secrecy in regards to one house's opinions on other houses, which would be biased and unreliable anyway. You're free to ask students what they think of their own houses. I agree with lizzardfire that until you know how the system really works, it's hard to make a judgment on whether or not our rules are justified.</p>
<p>You misread what I was saying. I have no specific problem with people drinking, although I personally would prefer a social group which encouraged moderate to minimal drinking. What I meant was that I thought drinking should be curtailed during PFW. None of us are old enough to drink, and it puts us in an awkward situation when we're trying to talk to students about Caltech and the rest of the lounge/courtyard is drinking. It sets us apart from current students and puts up a barrier to the kind of close interaction we're looking for.</p>
<p>For what it's worth, MIT forbids drinking during Campus Preview Weekend.</p>
<p>Also, the house I was staying in seemed to have a culture of almost universal drinking at all times of day and night. This is actually one of the reasons I was annoyed by the secrecy about the houses - no one would tell me that this house wasn't representative of Caltech as a whole. I ended up finding this out anyway, and in the process found a different house that I would absolutely love living in. But it would have been nice if someone could have told me, "That house has more drinking than most of the others. Check out X house or Y house if you don't like the social climate there". Keep in mind that a negative reaction to one house can turn a student off to the entire school, so they may never come back and discover that there were many houses they could have enjoyed.</p>
<p>eisen, you get great stories out of Caltech but it really isn't the best way to accurately determine what the houses are like since some of them purposefully pull pranks. Everyone I talk to still remembers PFW dinner in a certain house that had a goat in the courtyard.</p>
<p>Re, alcohol:
I actually liked the fact that current students could drink during my PFW because that meant the administration trusted students to do as they please. This stands out also because most schools force visit weekend to be dry. I thought they forced PFW to be dry last year, though.</p>
<p>Eisen reminds me of myself as a senior in HS. I was very surprised (in a bad way) by what I perceived to be a large amount of alcohol consumption. I always thought that nerds would have a strong aversion to drinking. In fact, I really disliked my house initially because of the strong traditions around alcohol.</p>
<p>At this time, I agree with lizzardfire's attitude on drinking. Drinking is a fairly normal thing in the real world (real world here even includes academia, eg when visiting grad schools).</p>
<p>eisen, my post was probably more driven by frustration with the culture, not with you. It is unfortunate that you found yourself in an environment you were uncomfortable with. Incidentally, I was in the same house you were in (I'm guessing) for my rotation when I was a prefrosh, and I hated that house at the time (but for different reasons). Now I don't mind it at all. </p>
<p>As for your comment regarding the rotation rules, I totally sympathize. It would not be a violation of rotation rules to say something like "I think that drinking is a more prevalent part of this house's culture" but it can run very close to being one. For example, if you said this without personally knowing it to be true, you could be perpetuating a stereotype, which wouldn't be fair to the house in question. For most people, it's easier to say less than to stress about actually making sure their statements are either a) completely factual or b) clearly stated opinion. There's also the idea that we want you to discover the houses on your own. That's why during prefrosh weekend there were numerous different events hosted by all of the different houses. </p>
<p>Finally, you said, "Keep in mind that a negative reaction to one house can turn a student off to the entire school, so they may never come back and discover that there were many houses they could have enjoyed." Yes, but we have found that the flip side is worse. If you discover yourself that you don't like an environment, you're most likely going to leave it and search for a different environment. We do our best doing prefrosh weekend to expose you to all our different environments (although this is very hard given the time requirements). In other words, this is often (as in your case) self correcting.</p>
<p>Now, if rotation rules are not in effect, we could easily bias some students against a house so strongly that you might avoid that house for years after rotation. I've seen it happen even WITH rotation rules in effect (not everyone follows them 100%, but most of us try to). In other words, it's not nearly as self-correcting as the other case.</p>
<p>I'm not sure how the drinking at Caltech compares to other techie or Ivy schools, but my impression is that it is far less than at most universities. I have a niece at a large public school who had a very difficult time adjusting, as she was naturally shy and didn't drink. She seemed to want to discard anyone as a friend who did, as opposed to just hanging out with people when they were sober, which was at least some of the time. She finally found a few friends who didn't drink or at least not illegally or to excess, but the first two years were pretty lonely for her since she automatically discarded perfectly nice people because they did drink.</p>
<p>As for my son at Caltech, I don't think drinking is as pervasive. He says he does not feel peer pressure to drink. On the other hand, I called him the other night with a question about one of his financial aid documents on a week night, which I rarely do. His room was very quiet very early in the evening, which seemed odd. He was doing homework in his room, but several other people were in his room, they were just all passed out from drinking. In some ways, I find this more disturbing than some of the larger schools, where the drinking usually doesn't start until at least Thursday night and goes through the weekend. Of course, drinking to this point of excess is never wise either. I hope the stress of Caltech doesn't drive this sort of drinking.</p>
<p>Caltech</a> Health Education I Alcohol Use</p>
<p>
[quote]
"Doesn't everybody drink?"
It often seems as though most students drink, and drink frequently. At Caltech, this is not the case. There is a complete range of drinking behavior on our campus. About 35% of Caltech undergraduate students and 15% of graduate students reported that they do not drink alcohol (National College Health Assessment Survey conducted Spring 2004). Only 13.5% of undergraduate and 42.5% of graduate students actually drink once a week or more.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>i personally don't have any friends who drink, to my knowledge, but the guy a couple doors down from me has a carton of beer in his room</p>
<p>Any of you guys know when Caltech is going to release that drug/alcohol survey they e-mailed out the other day? I'm pretty curious as to what the responses are, and how they compare to what stereotypes seem to be.</p>
<p>Also, as my own anecdote, the undergrad parties I've dropped by with my girlfriend to meet up with her old friends from here were considerably rowdier than what I had seen in my undergrad years, but I also avoided large fraternity parties and such, so it might not be a fair comparison. Also, freshman year, about half of us didn't drink and half of us did. Basically what happened was on Friday nights everyone that didn't drink would crowd into my room and we'd play board/video games or maybe go out to see a movie, and the other half would go down the hall and party in a different room. There was never any sort of animosity since we were all great friends; we just wanted to spend our Friday nights differently.</p>
<p>guys can you tell sth more about PFW? I believe nobody decides whether to go to college only/mostly basing on its drinking culture...there must have been a lot more things on PFW to talk about...</p>
<p>besides drinking is a personal matter, if you don't want then you never have to, and I don't think a sociable person could find difficulty making friends due to some sort of "drinking pressure", they always find their way</p>
<p>I guess I'll weight in here as well. Just to get this out of the way, I have no problem whatsoever with drinking and I wasn't in the house that's known for drinking, so I'm not really going to talk about that.</p>
<p>I hated PFW. Caltech was my absolute top choice before going, and now I have no interest in attending. My house was possibly the worst possible fit for me, and my host was a jerk. My main impression of the house system was that it got a lot of people pretending to be something that they are not in order to fit in with the house culture. I talked to a few people who genuinely liked what they were studying, but I talked to way more people who were doing something that they don't like just because it was easy enough for them to handle (I think Caltech kills off many people's love of physics and math). The classes I sat in on seemed no different than a class you could take at any other university, except with fewer people (who rarely interacted with the professors, so class size did not really do anything). The campus was ugly and most the people were either arrogant or to awkward to talk to. I met some nice people, but not enough to dispel my impression that Caltech is full of pretty antisocial people. Overall, prefrosh weekend was disapointing.
edit-used a bit more polite terms</p>
<p>I'm sorry you didn't have a good time, and I hope you find someplace that fits you better.</p>
<p>My son's account of PFW was that it was a lot of fun. His host was a good match. Fun. Nice. His host took him to a physics class and an econ class. He enjoyed both. He went to a chemical thermodynamics class and was less impressed (lots of definitions) but pointed out, "what can you expect right at the beginning of the quarter." He thought deconstruction was something he might run into in an English class, but was amused that it also applied to pianos.</p>
<p>Loved the weather, loved the campus. He reported the food was great. The house dinners were rowdy, but acceptably so. The high points of the weekend were riding on the telephone cable spools, ultimate frisbee, various late night activities, and the physics major talk.</p>
<p>Downside? He went to PFW trying to be convinced Caltech isn't too small. It is. No, that's not quite right. Caltech is fine. It's just that he is looking for a bigger school.</p>
<p>Thanks. Rereading my post, I may have came off harsher than I intended to. Don't get me wrong, Caltech is a great school, it's just not a place I want to spend the next 4 years of my life and more money than I feel comfortable talking about. Different places work for different people. Caltech just wasn't the school I thought it would be.</p>
<p>I'm sorry that your host was not someone you enjoyed being with. I disagree with pretty much everything you said, but I understand how you might feel the way you do--with the exception of Caltech's campus being ugly. Seriously? Our campus is by far one of the prettiest ones I've ever been on--Stanford is pretty nice too. MIT, on the other hand...</p>
<p>Also, despite their being truth in the fact that most Caltech students could use some work on their social skills, your description of them as "social retards" suggest that you could probably use a little more tact. I find this at least slightly ironic.</p>
<p>You might notice that I edited out the social retards description to something lighter before you made your comment. That's sort of a joking term we use in my family, but I realized that that kind of stuff doesn't translate well over the internet so I got rid of it. About the campus, the style just doesn't appeal to me, nor does the lack of respect students seemed to have for the buildings. I can only really talk about the house I stayed in, but it was a pretty run down place. The big classrooms were nice, but the smaller ones weren't. My opinion of the campus may have something to do with the fact that I live within walking distance of a university with an absolutely gorgeous campus, and the university I plan on going to could very well have the nicest campus out there (I've visited and was awestruck). Don't worry though, I'm not going to MIT or any of Caltech's rival schools.</p>
<p>I thought PFW was probably the most fun four days of my life. I didn't want to leave! Plus I got my official financial aid package while there and it was amazing so needless to say I gave them my forms in person. The school was perfect for me. However, I could definitely see how it could easily not be the right fit for many people. </p>
<p>Before I went, I thought the small size might be an issue but there I realized that's one of the best things when the secretary at financial aid knew and remembered me from the photocopy of my passport I sent in. I thought the house system was amazing. It seemed like your house was your family and I liked that. Plus having all these special traditions that are specific to your house must be really cool. </p>
<p>I stayed in Ruddock and loved it. I already feel like I'm good friends with a bunch of the kids I met there! I didn't get to see Page, Avery, Fleming, or Dabney but out of the other ones I did get to see and spend time in I think Ricketts was my favorite. I was afraid from Caltech's stereotypes that there would be too many socially awkward people, and while I did find a few, they were still people I would like hanging out with and there were way more people that weren't socially awkward. </p>
<p>My favorite event was Ruddock Greens and their hot tub. I was hanging out with the kid whose room they used all night and morning before that, and he kept saying that he needed to clean out his room at some point but I had no clue why. When I found out it was because they were going to turn his room into a hot tub I was amazed! Deconstruction at Blacker was entertaining but I was far more entertained by their use of liquid nitrogen in food preparation. Ricketts open mic was also very cool except when I sucked at guitar cause I haven't owned one in a year. Oh well LOL. </p>
<p>I also thought the campus was beautiful. There was so many nice flowers and I loved all the ponds. I thought the Millikan Library was quite a sight. It looked like a skyscraper only with a pond in front. I also liked the architecture for most of the buildings except the north houses but the insides of the houses were amazing because the murals everywhere were really cool. </p>
<p>After I finally got comfortable sometime during the first night, I didn't have a boring moment. I definitely think anyone considering Caltech should come out to visit PFW even if they live far away. I had to come from the east coast but it was well worth it. I thought it was a really good way to find out if it was a fit because its definitely different from any other school I know or have heard and I could see how someone could easily not like it as notausername find out but if you're not a fit its better to come for PFW and find out then rather than once you enroll.</p>