<p>I felt honored that I was offered acceptance to Caltech and would love to attend if possible. Unfortunately, I probably will not be able to afford it. I highly respect the school and was wondering if there would a bias against me if I applied for grad school if I turned undergrad down. </p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Well, we actually keep a list of people who turned down the offer, and occasionally we send them snarky postcards, in which we make very thinly veiled threats about the long-lived grudges we hold.</p>
<p>:-P ... hmm. On second thought, no. The graduate admissions committees wouldn't even know if you had ever applied to Caltech.</p>
<p>Regarding the money: I think the financial aid package will be adequate. Also, keep in mind that for the top 5-10% of Caltech students, the school offers Upperclass Merit Scholarships for sophomores, juniors, and seniors, which cover an amount ranging from 3/4-tuition to full tuition, room, board, and all fees. None of our competitors has such a program. So that might impact some of your contemplations on this issue.</p>
<p>If we're not one of the better students going in to Caltech is it possible to still get merit scholarships for the other years if we do well? How, exactly, would you accomplish that freshman year - just get good grades? What exactly would "good grades" entail in this situation (especially since freshman year is pass/fail)?</p>
<p>Usually getting started on research early and really standing out in your classes.</p>
<p>You have to be academically in the top 10% during your time at Calech to qualify for the merit awards, but this can be accomplished through research work as well as just doing well in your classes.</p>
<p>When are scholarship notifications sent out? or were they?</p>
<p>if you go to caltech as an undergraduate, do you have a better chance of doing ur graduate studies at caltech?</p>
<p>Scholarship letters were sent with letters of admission.</p>
<p>nocloud: No. With exceptioins, going as an undergrad probably reduces your chances for getting in as a graduate student, and this is true at many places. It's a bad choice for your professional prospects to stay at the same place for undergrad and grad, so the faculty discourage you (firmly if necessary) from making that mistake.</p>
<p>It should be pointed out that according to Caltech's commencement data, of the people who graduated with PhD's from Caltech in the last few years, the undergrad program that they most commonly came from was Caltech itself.</p>
<p>For example, in 2005, of those earning PhD's from Caltech, 7 of them did their undergrad at Caltech. Only 4 came from MIT, 6 from Harvard, 3 from Stanford, 6 from Berkeley (a 7th did his MS at Berkeley), 5 from Princeton, 5 from UIUC, 4 from Michigan, 3 from Cornell, 2 from Chicago, 1 each from Yale, CMU, and UCLA. </p>
<p>In 2004, 8 such people came from Caltech undergrad. 3 from MIT, 6 from Harvard (a 7th completed an MA at Harvard), 5 from Princeton, 5 from Berkeley (a 6th completed MS at Berkeley), 4 from Cornell, 3 from Illinois, 3 from Chicago, 2 from Michigan, 1 from CMU, and 0 from Stanford and Yale (although one person did get an MS from Stanford). </p>
<p>Now one might say that perhaps this is a case of geographic yield. For example, those who go to Caltech for undergrad may get used to the milieu and therefore prefer to stay there for grad-school (just like Harvard people may prefer to stay at Harvard, Stanford people may prefer to stay at Stanford, etc.). On the other hand, Caltech has a tiny undergraduate population compared to those other schools. MIT, for example, has about 4 times the undergrads that Caltech does. Yet the numbers indicate that there are far more Caltech undergrads than MIT undergrads who eventually get PhD's at Caltech. Hence, the geographic yield issue and the size issue probably cancel each other out. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that a strikingly large number of Caltech undergrads stick around for grad school. Whether you think going to Caltech for undergrad really does reduce your chances of getting into Caltech grad school or whether it's bad for your professional prospects to stay is a matter of opinion. But I think there can be no dispute that plenty of undergrads stay for grad school.</p>
<p>Per "doing research early", what avenues, other than SURF, exist for pursuing "doing research early"?</p>
<p>Joining labs and getting money or class credit during the year for helping out on a research project.</p>
<p>this is vaguely related. What are your chances of getting into SURF from a school other than Caltech if you have good grades, etc?</p>
<p>This depends totally on how you go about it. It's impossible to get funding out of the general SURF fund if you're not a Caltech student so you have to find a professor who wants to fund the research (i.e. whose research funds can cover your fellowship). If it's particularly "pure" work (where there's not a lot of lab funding) or if your preferred mentor is a postdoc or a recent faculty hire (i.e. first year assistant professor) then they probably won't have the money to pay for it and you won't get the SURF. On the other hand, if you ask someone who is a bigger deal and has a lot of money (lots of chemists, biologists, physicists, social scientists) then you are more likely to get the SURF. So this is something you have to be careful about when you are asking a faculty member to be your mentor. Make sure the lab can fund the fellowship. If they can and you appeal to the professor who runs it, then you are quite likely to get the SURF. Grades, etc., matter because they get you in the door so that profs will want to talk to you.</p>
<p>[[ Quick summary of the SURF process: you email profs who share your interests, asking for a research project. If they agree, you write a proposal together, and then submit it to the SURF office. This office decides who gets the fellowships. For Caltech students, sometimes even if the prof doesn't have any money for your paycheck, you get the SURF because there is a general fund from private donations to cover it.]]</p>