<p>My child has received admission to Caltech. Research opportunities, starting as an entering freshman, will be a large part of his decision making process. Any thoughts on a top freshman with stellar research awards already on his resume becoming part of a research team right away? Also, any suggestions on any specific professors?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Keep in mind that most freshmen entering Caltech were also pretty tops in their area and likely have some sort of similar awards.</p>
<p>Anyway, to find research, have your child look through the websites of professors in the department they’re interested in joining, then have them e-mail or pop in their office once the school year starts. You can also try going to the option representative and ask them if there’s any sort of listing of professors in the department with space for undergrad researchers.</p>
<p>I’m sure if your child already has the skills and knowledge to do cutting edge physics research, at least one if not multiple Caltech profs will have interesting research projects for your child.</p>
<p>One thing as a fellow senior, I’m just cautioning against maybe starting the very first term your child is in college. I’m not saying he/she can’t but maybe it’s worth holding off on starting research for a semester (2 terms at Caltech) to make sure your child in fully academically/socially/emotionally integrated within the college environment first before taking on more work.</p>
<p>^^^^Excellent advice</p>
<p>If your son is that anxious to start research as early as freshman year, he should just work in a lab in the summer. You can learn a lot more by being full-time rather than working 1-2 days a week. </p>
<p>Doing lab work during the 1st couple of terms freshman year is a mistake, in my opinion.</p>
<p>The attraction of Caltech is the cutting edge research. He’s received several national awards for his research. I understand that there’s more to college than courses and research, but why not do research as soon as he arrives? It’s not uncommon for freshman to do research, is it?</p>
<p>Working in a lab over the summer is a good idea. Unfortunately, there is not the level of research opportunities near where we live.</p>
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<p>There’s a reason Caltech has its first two terms for freshman be pass/fail. He should really be most concerned with finding some rhythm for his classes, figuring out which house he’s going to be a part of, and making friends that’ll stick with him through the rest of undergrad.</p>
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<p>Because the courses will be intense and basically all your working time should be spent toward them. The coursework is designed to be completely engrossing. Especially if he wants to go into a theoretical field like physics, you are really playing with fire if you are trying to work on top of it at the beginning. With Caltech, I think once you get behind you can easily be steamrolled. </p>
<p>I think racingreaver phrased it perfectly–you want to be able to set a rhythm in your classwork before you start piling on other things. Also, having time to meet your classmates is important academically because problem sets are worked on in groups. The most successful people I knew at MIT and Caltech were completely engrossed in classwork the first year or two during the academic term. And trust us–everyone on this board knows people who won national awards in physics and math. Our advice applies to them too. I would at least wait a couple terms.</p>
<p>He could do summer research at Caltech. </p>
<p>A summer’s worth of research is easily more valuable than doing research in your spare time during the academic year. For most fields and especially physics, mastering the theoretical underpinnings should be THE priority if you plan a career in research. Undergrad is the time to do that.</p>
<p>I’ll add one more thing. The best time to start out in a lab is the summer, or whenever you can be full-time. The reason is that the typical pattern for learning to work in a lab is to get familiar with a few basic techniques or instruments that the lab uses and then start to generate data with those. Learning how to do this can be very time consuming, but once you do it it may be easier to be productive on your own limited schedule during the school year. For example, you can run an experiment on it on a Saturday or Friday night at your own leisure without supervision.</p>
<p>I’ll add one more thing.</p>
<p>Your kid should think about what he hopes to get out of Caltech. Caltech is unusual, not for its cutting edge research (there are other places that are similar in this respect,) but because its classes are extremely rigorous and the workload is huge. Basically everything you might possible encounter in your field you’ll have to tackle at a high level as an undergrad. The analogy people use is the firehose (also used to describe MIT). The danger with this is that there is so much work that it may be hard to put it what you are doing in its proper perspective (i.e., to look at things in multiple ways and daydream about the material; learning to be creative basically by doing thought experiments.) To transform your field, IMO it is important to have your classes be THE priority. </p>
<p>There is creativity in research too, but a ton of time is spent troubleshooting and just churning through experimental protocols. FYI, I was an engineering major at MIT. Ben Golub, a graduate of Caltech’s math program, would be a good person to talk to. I don’t think he checks this board anymore, but someone around here or the MIT board is bound to have his info. </p>
<p>Good luck to your son.</p>