<p>I have some dollar bills in my pocket with Larry Summers' signature on them.</p>
<p>Anyways, I'm Frank Fan, from Webster, NY. There's a pretty good chance that I'll be going to Caltech, as MIT doesn't want to accept me, and I really like the school. I think I'm going to buy like seven Caltech shirts and some pocket protectors. I'm not sure what I want to major in, but I'm kinda leaning towards physix.</p>
<p>EDIT: Bah! They don't have the pocket protectors on the Caltech bookstore website!</p>
<p>Congrats to all
Frankthetank, May I suggest a zippered sweatshirt? That and the fleece sweatshirt seem to get most kids thru the year at Caltech.
Isn't it great that MIT & Caltech offer great education, but each has slightly different ideas of who would be a good match?</p>
<p>I read the page before you said other than the bookstore. It seems like anywhere else would be just as expensive (or more) and would have a smaller selection. Oh well, here's the link anyways.</p>
<p>We ordered Apple laptop thru Caltech bookstore; it was best price with warrantee. Also informed S what software not to order, as could be downloaded once matriculated. Plenty of time for computer shopping.</p>
<p>I bought the MIT prank shirt too. I have a friend (Wufei) who will be going to MIT next year, and another friend who currently attends (Ruth). Ruth was actually at the CPW where they handed out those shirts... too bad she didn't get one.</p>
<p>Actually, not so many Caltech apparels are nicely designed. Only MIT prank T-shirt and Caltech brown sweater are kinda good. Frankly though, most of the apparels are not as good as Stanford's or Cal's except for the caps.</p>
<p>the other day, one of my friends currently at stanford put mit and caltech this way: "MIT is incredibly prestigious, and in absolute terms more cutting edge research get's done there. But caltech has less than 1000 undergrads and less than 1000 grads. Which means per students, Caltech practically smothers you with attention (from what i hear)" </p>
<p>Any ring of truth to that generalization? :P</p>
<p>Everything except the MIT getting more cutting edge research done ;-) Caltech's stregth is being incredibly agile and moving into fields before other people realize they exist, and then leaving others (at big places, often including MIT) to pick up the pieces and fill in the blanks. Like Erik Winfree's work with biological computation, or the work being done in behavioral and neural economics, or applying cutting edge dynamical systems theory to the study of management (my little corner of the world), or Hideo Mabuchi and Jeff Kimble's work in quantum computation.</p>
<p>Yes, MIT gets a lot of cool stuff done, but I wouldn't say it's on the whole more innovative than Caltech. Caltech makes up for its small size several times over by being more agile and more aggressive. Like the little startup that outmaneuvers Microsoft, etc.</p>
<p>I guess that's all open to healthy academic debate, though I think it's surely true. </p>
<p>The other point about getting a lot of attention -- yes, that is true, for those students who want it. Caltech is unmatched as a place where you can very reliably get so much direct, high level research contact with scholars of such high quality.</p>
<p>thanks Ben. :] "Caltech makes up for its small size several times over by being more agile and more aggressive." That's the best part...along with the attention i guess heh.</p>
<p>i guess sometimes it's tiring to have mit and caltech compared so much though. Yet last year's Caltech prank was pretty funny... :P</p>
<p>Caltech should create a super illusion that causes MIT to disappear altogether from human perception for like 30 minutes. Now that'd be something pretty cool! lol</p>