<p>I am really curious about what Caltech looks/feels like in the eyes of MIT students. Can anyone present a generally accepted opinion/opinions?</p>
<p>I assume you are looking for some kind of compare/contrast with MIT.</p>
<p>Caltech is much smaller and more oriented toward theory. The attitude there is that everyone there (or any good scientist) should have the ability to become a good physicist, and that attaining a high level in theory should help in every field (even if you aren’t actually applying theory to a problem, just the intelligence in general.) This is reflected in their curriculum, which forces you to take quantum mechanics as well as the theoretical version of calculus.
The typical Caltech student has a perfect transcript, SAT subscores in the high 700’s, and at least have some minor awards in math team and science. Junior year, they generally get the highest grade in their math/science classes (and get recs that say they are the best student the teacher ever had). There are plenty of MIT students like this, but sometimes they reject people like that for people with much lower scores and accomplishments. In some of these cases, affinity and/or success in research may allow people to get into MIT with non-stellar scores/GPA. This generally doesn’t happen at Caltech because, again, the attitude is that everyone should be at an extremely high level in theory. I’d say the only cases where Caltech guys may make up for mistakes on their transcripts and/or SAT’s is with accomplishments in math team, which are much more difficult. (e.g., Caltech would rather have a guy with 700 SAT math and a 120 AMC than a guy with 800 SAT math and 100 AMC.)</p>
<p>Part of Caltech’s selectivity is due to the fact it is so small. So they tend to take people that are strong in every objective area. However, stellar GPA/scores/accomplishments are a necessity but not necessarily sufficient for admission.</p>
<p>Another key difference between MIT and Caltech is that MIT is more entrepeneurial in spirit. And of course, engineering is more popular at MIT. And MIT has strong economics and business programs. </p>
<p>I’d say that once you get into the core classes of your major, the difficulty of MIT and Caltech is the same. Caltech’s first year may be harder, unless you choose the theoretical track for math and physics at MIT. (The super-theoretical track is quite popular at MIT, but the theoretical calc is much less so. Most people don’t want to take it over.)</p>
<p>I meant to say, the theoretical physics track is quite popular at MIT, but the theoretical calculus track is not very popular.</p>
<p>DS, now a happy MIT freshman visited both schools and talked to a number of students/alums from both schools. I think his choice of MIT came down to conversation. First of all, MIT just has MORE students to talk to, so if you are the hyper-gregarious sort (or intend to be in college), MIT wins for just sheer numbers of more interesting people to talk to. Secondly, he really did think Caltech students were a little quieter on the whole. Not in a bad way, but just a little quieter. Furthermore, if you get tired of talking tech and want to talk lit, Harvard is just down the street. Caltech, in contrast is sort of by itself in suburbia.</p>
<p>I think Caltech also has cross-registration with a liberal arts college (Claremont College?). And Caltech actually might be closer to this liberal arts college than MIT is to Harvard.</p>
<p>Occidental?</p>
<p>Honestly, MIT people don’t spend much time thinking about Caltech and how they view it. I mean, what would be the point?</p>
<p>collegealum314’s assessment is pretty much my understanding, but if what you’re asking is whether MIT people admire Caltech, look down on it, or something else, then the answer is that we see them as a top school with whom we have much in common, but that we don’t really care that much. Even for humor purposes - we have local schools to make jokes about. ;)</p>
<p>Claremont College is in Australia. The Claremont Colleges are quite a ways from Caltech - I live close to them, but Pasadena is 20 minutes away.</p>
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<p>Caltech has a course exchange program with Occidental College, and after their freshman year Caltech students can take courses there with their advisor’s approval. (It has a similar program with an art and design college.) </p>
<p>Occidental is about four miles as the crow flies from Caltech, but the crow would be flying across a gorge and over some steepish hills; if you were walking or biking it would be more than four miles. I don’t know about public transportation. MIT and Harvard are about a mile and a half – or two T stops – apart down Mass Ave. A 30 minute walk or 5 minute T ride.</p>
<p>There’s a T-shirt you can get at MIT that says something like: “People at CalTech are too stupid to get into MIT”. I would guess that there is a mirror image available at CalTech.</p>
<p>There is apparently a similar rivalry between Bowdoin and Bates, and between Dartmouth and Yale.</p>
<p>I don’t think any college students anywhere think about other colleges, except as a source of parties or classes.</p>
<p>Certainly, CalTech has much, much better weather than MIT, like fur sure.</p>
<p>The shirt says “Caltech” on the front and “Because not everyone can go to MIT”. All this is in good fun, as far as I’ve seen. It’s not as though people walk around saying, “I hate those F’ers at Caltech.” It’s an amusing rivalry with superiority complexes :D</p>
<p>Better weather is debateable. I didn’t apply to Caltech because I wanted to get out of boring old neverchanging southern California. And I love that I did ^.^</p>
<p>^ I think the joke started with Caltech doing that first, ie, with ‘MIT’ on front and ‘…because not everyone can go to Caltech’ on the back. :P</p>
<p>^ I believe that was part of a CPW prank before my time, but MIT’s copied it. I’ve also heard of Harvard copying it :D</p>
<p>I am old and my brain is like swiss cheese, but I am pretty sure the shirts existed in the Coop (along with the cognate “Harvard… because not everyone can get into MIT” shirts) prior to Caltech showing up at MIT’s CPW with shirts, which happened, IIRC, my senior year (2006).</p>
<p>Being from the East coast, my son chose MIT over CalTech in part because the travel to/from school would be more onerous to/from California. More importantly, he saw his social life as potentially more restricted at CalTech; there is something like 10 times the number of kids in each class year at MIT as compared to CalTech. In addition, there are so many other schools near MIT in Boston and Cambridge (more than 30?) so social life is further enhanced (ex. my son met his girlfriend at a frat party; she goes to BU).</p>
<p>I feel like for most people it becomes quickly apparent whether you’re more an MIT person or a Caltech person - from what I’ve heard, Caltech is a little quieter, smaller, and a little geekier, whereas MIT is larger (and therefore a bit more impersonal), louder, and less geeky as a whole (of course, we’re still total geeks at heart). I know that this is a totally unsatisfying answer, but from the people I’ve talked to who attended both preview weekends, the choice was pretty obvious.</p>
<p>IIRC, Caltech gives some merit aid, though, where MIT doesn’t. It’s pretty competitive, of course, but if this is important to you, you might want to take it into account.</p>
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<p>Spoken with the jargon of a Course 9 graduate! :)</p>
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<p>I know a few people who decided to apply to MIT but not Caltech because of the weather. I didn’t apply because I forgot that Caltech existed. By the time I remembered, it was too late to take the SAT2 math2.</p>
<p>I would actually like pick MIT over Caltech for the weather. Having grown up in CA, I am anxious to get out of the skin-cancer state, and see snow more than once every 5 years.</p>
<p>^ I hear ya. I did it. I don’t regret it. Though people told me I would :D</p>