<p>Do they have a commitment on undergraduate teaching? Are there lots of TAs? How harsh are the professors?</p>
<p>hey! i’d like to know too… and I’m also kinda interested in the changes caltech’s going to implement after the core revision…</p>
<p>Hmm… there seems to be virtually no Caltech student on CC -_-</p>
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<p>I would like to believe that many professors at Caltech are committed to do their best in teaching us. Of course, there are exceptions. </p>
<p>In introductory classes in which all 250 students are enrolled, there are usually ~20 students per TA. As you progress in your major, the classes become smaller and you have a professor and a TA for 4-7 students (at least that’s the case with astrophysics).</p>
<p>The professors are rarely unreasonable since Caltech has a survey sent out at the end of each term where students tell/complain (anonymously) how they felt about this or that class so that the following year professors could adjust accordingly. However, even though professors here are reasonable, it is still non-trivial to get A’s and even B’s so be prepared to work hard for a good GPA.</p>
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<p>Don’t worry about the changes - they won’t go into effect for quite some time.</p>
<p>^ I’m going in as part of the class of '15, and I seem to like the changes imposed for the core… and especially about the frosh seminar:</p>
<p>Frosh seminar
The Frosh Seminar is our recommended way to help achieve two of our most important goals, the ability to take multiple paths through the core, and the exposure of incoming students to faculty in non-lecture settings. We envision Frosh Seminar as a required first term class with 10-15 freshmen and a single faculty member exploring in depth an exciting topic in the lab, around a table, in the field, or anywhere else appropriate. Examples that have been mentioned by a variety of faculty members include an exploration of signatures of the ice age glaciations in Southern California, an exploration of the physics of music, the reproduction of important classical experiments in different fields, and more. We believe that the Caltech faculty members are sufficiently interesting and creative that everyone could imagine one or two such seminars that they might enjoy teaching. The seminars are not intended to be a requirement for SURF-type individual research, though, done well, such research could work well as such a Frosh Seminar.
- Core Committee Task Force Preliminary Report</p>