MIT v Cal Tech v Harvey Mudd

[collegealum314]

<p>Anyone who knows anything about science won’t be shocked about turning down MIT for Caltech. Among science people, they are equal in prestige. They might be surprised at Harvey Mudd, although those in the know are aware that it is an excellent school.</p>

<p>There are some uneducated people that mix up Caltech with Cal State, but obviously these people won’t be hiring you for tech jobs. There’s a smaller subset of the general public that thinks MIT is a trucking school in Michigan.</p>

[gigog]

<p>So apparently I don’t know anything about science, eh?
jk, jk</p>

<p>Apologies if I came across as implying that Caltech and Harvey Mudd are anything less than excellent schools. Obviously they are - and you really can’t go wrong w/ your decision. I can’t speak to what the recruiting situation is there, though, so I just wanted to share my experience w/ MIT.</p>

[molliebatmit]

<p>

There’s a smaller subset of the general public that thinks MIT is a trucking school in Michigan.

So ignorant.</p>

<p>Everybody knows it’s the Minnesota Institute of Trucking.</p>

[faraday]

<p>to gigog: 80 person per physics major/per year… I think.</p>

[Kunatah]

<p>Hahaha thanks for the wonderful read guys!!</p>

<p>As far as MIT vs Caltech for recruiting purposes, for Physics many of my friends tell me that they prefer Caltech, albeit it’s a lot smaller, so you are going to have no problem on MIT either. For Computer Science though, Caltech’s dept. is pretty new, so companies like Google, Facebook mostly Hire from Stanford, MIT and Carnegie Mellon.</p>

<p>All three schools are just wonderful choices though,</p>

[Dogod11]

<p>

@faraday

I think the coolest thing at MIT is how much liberty you get to shape your education. Want to audit that awesome Quantum field theory class as a frosh? Go ahead. Want to take 8 classes as a sophomore? Sure. You can also add a class up to 1 month after class started. And prereq’s are not “required”, in the sense that they are guidelines. You basically get to challenge yourself as much as you want to. No one will forbid you (maybe you’ll get some warnings from your advisor if you haven’t been performing well). I haven’t taken a single multiple choice test here, and all the physics tests had all the formulas available. THe emphasis is definitely on the thinking process and problem-solving rather than mindless computation. I think the teaching in the physics department has been uniformly distributed between good to exceptional, and I think the curriculum here is extremely solid and well organized for physics. If you took the minimum theoretical requirement for course 8: 8.012, 8.022, 8.03, 8.033, 8.04, 8.044, 8.05, 8.06, and 8.07/8.08/8.09, you’ll have a very solid knowledge of physics, and can shift to more advanced topics in a fairly smooth manner.

I never even thought of that! (the whole thing, but mainly what is in bold)
I think I just added something new to my list of what to look for in colleges.</p>