Is it just me or...

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>does the requirements to get into Caltech seem a lot harder than MIT's. I mean, if you have one B, unless you qualify for USAMO or something, you're done for! This is after reading the "Grades vs Curriculem" Thread in the caltech page.</p>

<p>Wanna know something even scarier? That guy chebyshev, it at my new schoool. Holy Crap! 3 Hours of sleep! Cheating all the time! Subjective grades! It looked so much better before I heard this.</p>

<p>I have nothing against this guy. Published in the Journal Annals of Mathematics at age 15? 1500 at 9th grade? I got like a 1260 that year!</p>

<p>Yep, I'm screwed.</p>

2

<p>The really good people should limit themselves to one or two schools so that suckers like me can have a better chance :).</p>

3

<p>Depends what you mean by "requirements." ;-) The schools define "ideal candidate" in different ways.</p>

4

<p>I thought Caltech is basically MIT transplanted on the west coast. You have to have very very good grades, take a bunch of AP's, peform well on tests, like SAT, AMC, AIME, etc, do research, publish. Seems really daunting. </p>

<p>What is MIT's ideal candidate?</p>

5

<p>Caltech is more stats oriented (less subjective). MIT is more people oriented. At Caltech, USAMO means you're in; at MIT, USAMO means you're 50/50. Caltech: Male/Female = 70/30. MIT: Male/Female = 50/50.</p>

6

<p>benjones, youre winking emoticon doesnt seem to have turned into a graphic. The rules behind these emoticons are funny are they not?</p>

7

<p>oh wait you put a hyphen in between, tough luck...</p>

8

<p>Wow... and I thought I was stressed out about applying to colleges. One word...relax?</p>

9

<p>Sagar - the schools do have a lot of similarities, but are also different in a lot of ways. Ben Golub hit the nail on the head when he posted somewhere in the Caltech forum (I'm too lazy to look it up) that Caltech puts more emphasis on pure scientific achievement whereas MIT looks at the spectrum of an applicant's passions and pursuits more evenly. That's not to say that science and math aren't paramount in our application process as well, but I think we give a little more weight to "everything else" when making a decision.</p>

<p>I like that MIT and Caltech are similar yet different - and I celebrate the differences between us.</p>

10

<p>i don't remember thinking they were looking for drastically different candidates either, when i applied. and i think you're adding a bit much nonsense to what successful applicants actually do: i had good grades, but not perfect; did well on the sats, ok on the amcs and unimpressively on the aimes; had no research and no publications. i probably had more awards from my school's english dept. than from the science dept. they both accepted me anyway.</p>

11

<p>You found an exception? Well that disproves the rule right there. Screw it, the whole universe has gone wrong.</p>

12

<p>Yeah, I think Caltech is a little more hardcore in the math/sci department, but MIT is a little more well-rounded. (As in, they like, actually have humanities classes.) MIT accepted me and Caltech waitlisted me, and based on my assumptions above, that makes perfect sense. When I had a chance to explore things other than engineering, I jumped at it. If I had opted for research or egineering summer programs instead of political science ones, Caltech might have accepted me and MIT might not have. There's really nothing wrong with either approach (although I do like MITs better....<em>grin</em>) but it's easy to see how it can make Caltech look scarier. =)</p>

13

<p>Yeah, well I'm big on Model UN. Just like a lot of people actually do AIME, I am good at MUN. I am not good at all these math competitions. I always enjoy long term, deep thinking projects. I like MUN because I get to argue, represent countries, drive people nuts, and win, because its something I really enjoy(def over AMC).</p>