<p>can some of the students at caltech provide some feedback on how crazy the workload is?</p>
<p>like, how much sleep can one expect to get on a typical night?</p>
<p>7 hours on average. i get 5-6 on busy nights, 4 at worst (once or twice a term), 9 or 10 on weekends if i need it.</p>
<p>WOW man.... that's such a relief! I thought it'd be like... 5 hours if you're lucky!</p>
<p>haha...</p>
<p>Too bad Ben is a BEAST....regular people get like 4....</p>
<p>you're kidding right?</p>
<p>Seriously Ben? Similar for most other students?. I work my ass off at a boarding school type place, and during 'peak season', I'd average 3-5 hours a night (20 minute naps throughout the day save lives).</p>
<p>Edit: My 2^7'th post :)</p>
<p>Well, I value my sleep, so I try hard to make time for it. If you don't procrastinate a lot, you can sleep at least as much as I do (I'm not all that efficient). I know people who get by on 5 but only because they leave all their work til very late. Yeah, Caltech is not abusive, it just forces you to be a lot more careful with your time.</p>
<p>I slept an average of 10-11 hours a night through the first two terms. Mind you, this was merely the mean; I would sleep 0-2 hours on a work-heavy night, and then sleep 12-14 hours each of the next two days. </p>
<p>Of course, I didn't attend a number of my lectures and I'm a freshman on pass/fail, so this isn't necessarily typical.</p>
<p>Still, I do know a few freshman that sleep at least 12 hours every night.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Still, I do know a few freshman that sleep at least 12 hours every night.
[/quote]
Haha, wow. I'm probably not going to Caltech, so it doesn't really matter, but that's reassuring. 12 hours of sleep sounds so awesome... it's about twice as much as I get now. Of course, right now I don't get six hours a night because I'm particularly overloaded, just because I don't settle down and get into bed until too late.</p>
<p>"Of course, I didn't attend a number of my lectures and I'm a freshman on pass/fail, so this isn't necessarily typical."</p>
<p>Are all freshman on pass/fail? Is this advantageous? I'm sure they'll explain it to the freshman when we get there, but any opinions on this? :) I'm a curious little buggar.</p>
<p>All freshman are on pass/fail for the first two terms (so not Spring term). It's a good thing.</p>
<p>PASS FAIL FROSH!!! Yeah it's a good thing, lets your slack off/get adjusted to college before you have to worry about grades. It's really nice.</p>
<p>That is quite generous. But then again the freshmen might have to suffer classes where they are tested to see if they will pass the next round, as in an organic chemistry class. Even passing can require a great deal of work.</p>
<p>thats certainly interesting. i go to a magnet school and i can only hope to get about 3 a night. infact, i doubt i will be getting any sleep tonight. i have two essays to write, two java programming assignments, a website to make, a government test, a calculus quiz, and god knows what else i have forgotten all tomorrow.</p>
<p>then again this is the toughest high school in the entire state.</p>
<p>B)</p>
<p>Yeah, I never understood magnet schools that assign a lot of fairly pointless work just to keep you very busy. That isn't so good psychologically.</p>
<p>Wow, actually doesn't sound like it'd be that hard to adapt to. Some weeks I sleep 2-3 a night average here, but that's more thanks to my prodigious procrastination abilities than the actual work level. If I were forced to use my time wisely, I could probably manage. I hope.</p>
<p>how many freshmen on average fail?</p>
<p>Fail what? Fail out of Caltech or fail a class? I'd guess there are less than 5 (if that) per core class (Ma, Ph, Ch) that fail. So I'd guess somewhere around 10 people fail a class during freshman year. You definitely won't fail out frosh year. However, there are a few people (maybe 10?) that transfer freshman year because they realize the workload is more than they is more than they can or want to handle.</p>
<p>These are incredibly rough estimates, though. People don't often talk about whether they failed or not. Maybe other people could give their guesses as well?</p>
<p>Is it good to try to take same of your harder required classes in the first two quarters so you only have to worry about passing them and not getting an A? How do the pass/fail grades affect your GPA? I hate worrying about grad school already. -_-; </p>
<p>I'm so glad to hear that so few people (~5%?) fail any classes their freshman year. It's already going to be a hard enough adjustment getting my first B/C...</p>
<p>You usually can't take that many required courses in your major so early on... (Except for EE51 for electrical engineers and Math 5 for math majors.) So you can't stuff that many requirements out of the way on pass/fail. But you can get a few out of the way, in some majors.</p>