<p>I finished a three year mechanical engineering degree in the UK this year (I'm English). I've started a masters degree, a two year course, in France, at one of the engineering schools. This semester has been useful, but looking at the sylabus for next semester it seems a lot of the things I've covered already or don't really fall within my intrests, and sitting in on other clases is not straightforward. </p>
<p>Looking at the Caltech page, there is a lot of courses offered that intrest me.. aeronautical / control engineering / continium mechanics type courses. I was wondering if it would be realistic to pitch up, find a place to live somewhere nearby, and attend clases without being formally enrolled. This wouldn't have been a problem where I studied in England, except perhaps for labs and tutorials in small groups. Would it be wise to ask the permission of the lecturer beforehand? Are there any access cards to get into the teaching buildings? How big are the classes typically? What kind of living costs are there, given I wouldn't want to live more than perhaps 30 minuites away by car?</p>
<p>One of the attractions of Caltech are the small classes. Caltech is a private university. If you want to attend, then apply for graduate school. I don’t think you should be able to attend classes for free. If you try to crash the classes, I hope they escort you off campus, moocher.</p>
<p>I don’t think Batllo goes to Caltech, so please disregard his comments. </p>
<p>The thing is, you’re in mechanical engineering, and from what I gather, that involves a lot of mechanical shop work, which might make auditing a class difficult.</p>
<p>I’ve actually never heard of anyone doing what you’ve described however. You should probably just email all the professors of the classes you wish to take, and if they’re fine with it, I don’t see why you can’t audit those courses. Of course, they may choose not to grade your assignments. </p>
<p>Um, I would agree with Batllo on this one. Officially, you should be paying to audit classes if you’re not registered as a student. If the professors don’t care, then it might be fine.</p>
<p>Yes, I suppose you could call it mooching. Getting into dept paying the full fees doesn’t sound very attractive to me, I would sooner continue my studies somewhere in Europe where the cost of higher education is generally lower. As I’ve already done a fair bit of ME, I don’t need experience in the workshop, I would be studying mostly applied math, in the classroom. I certainly wouldn’t expect to have my assignments marked or to sit exams. I will try to get in contact with the professors of the courses, and see what the situation is. I would apreciate any information you could give me. Thanks.</p>
<p>Sorry if this idea offends anyone. I think in Europe mostly universities are goverment funded, and the cost of education is amortised over the entire population (not to say this is a better system). Fees of even the best uni’s are often less than 500 Euros per semester. The idea of ‘stealing’ education sounds a little strange to me, as everyone contributes torwards these costs. Caltech is a private university, but, as long as there is a free seat in the lecture hall, I guess I’m causing no harm, other than increasing the aircon bill a few cents. I don’t want to get into an argument, I was just worndering if this idea would be feasible.</p>
<p>this seems to me to truly exemplify wanting to learn, you seem to be doing if for all the right reasons so when you hear from any of the profs come back and post on here what they said</p>
<p>No, I am not a Caltech student. I think this applies to all private universities. IMHO, I do not believe the OP should be allowed to be sitting in on classes, participate, be present on campus to get a free education because he can squat in an unoccupied seat. Even if he can get a professor’s permission to sit in a class, much less audit the class for the whole semester, why should the OP feel he can get an education free at a private or public university? He does not belong to any campus unless he has gone through the process of applying and getting accepted. This not the UK with government subsidized education. Even Americans have to pay public university tuition. Just because you have an ug degree and are taking grad classes, you are still someone who is trying to obtain something for free, using resources that are not for yours to use. Again, why don’t you apply and pay the tuition? You have a lot of nerve wanting access to buildings, that really crosses the line of decency and ethics. Caltech has an Honor Code. Stay away from tech and any other university unless you properly enrolled. Online courses are free. Again, IMHO.</p>
<p>Yes, I am aware of the OCW materials, and I think they are wonderful. And it’s not just MIT, a number of universities now offer free online video lectures (<a href=“http://www.ocwconsortium.org%5B/url%5D.”>www.ocwconsortium.org.</a>) I’ve worked through several courses already, and I have a list of several more I plan to study.</p>
<p>To be honest, most professors like having people audit their courses. In applied math courses, there’s generally a lot of spare seating (except for some introductory courses), so it wouldn’t be much of a problem for anyone. </p>
<p>Also, Caltech education is in fact subsidized. The government funds large portions of the research budget, which is then one of the reasons for Caltech’s attractiveness to students. The same thing goes for many other research schools.</p>
<p>Again, you should probably write the profs to see how they feel about it. I don’t think any of them would be really against it, especially in a lecture course, where seating doesn’t really matter.</p>
<p>To be honest however, I’ve found that most lecturers at Tech aren’t that impressive, since Tech doesn’t have teaching professors.</p>
<p>If the professor is ok with it, I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t. Although I’ll agree with Kamikazewave that some professors are better than others.</p>
<p>I’m a high school student and even I was allowed to sit in on a few of the graduate classes (Ae 105, 121, and 160)</p>
<p>I talked to 4 professors and all 4 were completely open to letting me sit in and even grading the homework/tests. (For one of the classes, Ph135, I found out that even a year worth of cramming quantum physics did not prepare me for the class and I just apologized to the professor and stopped going)</p>
<p>To get access to the buildings you need an official sponsor and then approval from the department chair above that sponsor, so that you count as one of that department’s “guests” or “visitors”. This is what visiting professors, researchers, etc. get and it entitles you to an IMSS account and building access, though only for buildings approved by the department chair. This would be hard to get, but for me one of the professors for my classes was a parent of a friend so they had little problem in sponsoring me. For library check out priveleges you would then have to become a proxy borrower of some professor (ideally the one sponsoring you) but this means they are liable for any books and would only really do it if they trust you.</p>
<p>As for labs, none of my classes are lab based except for an end of the year project for Ae105 which we haven’t done yet so you would have to ask the professors.</p>
<p>Note, you will NOT get ANY credit for sitting in on classes and at best you could get a letter of rec from the professor teaching the course.</p>
<p>Hey Batllo, he didn’t ask for your opinion you tool. I have sat in on 3 courses at Caltech. I e-mailed the professors and they were all very welcoming. Don’t listen to that idiot, obviously his education has been a waste of time.</p>