<p>I'm so sorry to be bombarding this board with all my questions as of late. :3</p>
<p>Just so you know, I'm asking because visiting is out of the question for now, although if I were admitted it might be possible for me to visit in the spring, but I'm kind of curious right now.</p>
<p>CalTech is still on my list, but to be honest I haven't done a lot research on it. The only things I've heard that really make up my impression of CalTech are:</p>
<p>1) It's hard
2) Students love working hard because they love learning
3) Students have weird ways of having fun
4) It's collaborative
5) There's a house system where each house has its own semi-sub-culture.</p>
<p>I'll list a few things that I really like about CalTech, but please please let me know if I'm mistaken:</p>
<p>1) I love learning for learning's sake, and I love the intensity of just processing a lot of information for a lot of classes at once. CalTech seems perfect for this.
2) From what I can tell, most students stay in the House system all 4 years (am I wrong?). I really like this, I feel like it builds a better/closer community than systems where people rush to move out ASAP.
3) CalTech's small. I go to a somewhat large public high school about four times the size of CalTech, and I just like the idea of being able to know everyone in my class.</p>
<p>Some questions/concerns about whether or not CalTech would be good for me/I'd be a good fit for CalTech:</p>
<p>1) The honor code - it sounds good in principle, and I don't really foresee myself having a problem with following it, but can someone clarify what is meant by the honor code as an "absolutely integral part of student life," per lizzardfire's open letter? Does this mean that homework copying never happens? How do students treat situations where they see friends who might be violating the honor code - confront? say nothing? tell? I guess I'm nervous because I don't know exactly how this applies.
2) Diversity in the student body. Since the admissions process is so focused on academic ability, how different really is the CalTech student body? Obviously, there will be a variety of people with a variety of interests. I personally really really love music - how easy is it to pursue this kind of interest at CalTech? I'm aware of the orchestras that exist, but do people really like being in orchestra or do they just participate for the sake of participating?
3) Smallness as a downside? The field I'm currently most interested in is aerospace engineering. Recently, I heard (but have no way of verifying the accuracy of this report, so please correct me if I'm wrong) that CalTech no longer has any aerospace faculty because in such a small school, it simply wasn't popular enough to sustain the classes. My intended major obviously could change, but considering this, would CalTech still be a good idea? I know that CalTech still runs the JPL - would it be difficult to get experience there while majoring in something like ME?
4) Last, most insignificant concern for me, but please dont' shoot me. :3 I feel like I'd fit in very very well at "that other tech school." Do you current CalTechers know of any generalized differences between the two schools that might mean that someone very happy over in Cambridge might not enjoy Pasadena as well?</p>
<p>Any advice especially on the concerns/questions I had is really really most welcomed and appreciated. Also, please correct me if I'm wrong anywhere. I definitely will try to visit if I'm admitted, so this is just more to satisfy my curiosity for the moment, but I'll definitely understand if there isn't much you can tell me because it's one of those things where I just have to go see it to find out.</p>