<p>I have heard a lot of things regarding the core classes and in general the academic atmosphere at Caltech. I hope that some Caltech students, especially upperclassmen can help clarify things because I was going to attend Caltech next year, but I have recently been offered spots on 2 different waitlists 
And so I am back to reevaluating everything about the schools</p>
<li><p>The Core Classes, is it as intense as people say? Are people really given no time to take what they want freshmen and sophomore year?</p></li>
<li><p>I hear from Caltech kids that they work sooo hard that they have no time to do anything else. How true is that? (I am sure people work hard, but when I was a freshmen in high school, the juniors told me how hard it would be in junior year and ughh I chillaxed all year with 5 APs).</p></li>
<li><p>Premed. I know that most Caltech kids are usually focused on Grad School, but out of the people who are intended to be premed, how many acutally get in med school?</p></li>
<li><p>Referring back to premed. Do most students apply for MD/PhD or just MD? </p></li>
<li><p>Is the low med school rate due to the fact that Caltechers only reach for the best med schools? aka Harvard, UCSF…</p></li>
<li><p>Caltechers say that med school is hard for them because they have low GPAs. But isn’t the average at caltech 3.3? so that’s like a B/B+. I would consider a B/B+ pretty good in college. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Thank you very much for answering any questions!! I just wanted to know EVERYTHING before considering the two waitlists. I know that Caltech is amazing in terms of a reserach institution, the best, but I do want to to do premed.</p>
<p>Well, I'm no Caltech student, but from what I've heard people say on these boards, if you are premed, DO NOT go to Caltech. I guess b/c techers tend to have lower GPAs than students from other top schools b/c of the rigor at Caltech? Sorry I wasn't able to be of more help. Hopefully an actual techer will apply to offer better advice.</p>
<p>1-2:
The freshman core classes are hard, but not impossible. I play in the concert band and with the baseball team, and can even find a couple of hours a week to watch some movies or learn how to play Warcraft III. And I am by no means a genius. I came here from a waiting list and probably belong to the lowest echelon in terms of intellect :)
So, you can definitely find time to do whatever stuff you like if you learn to manage your time properly.</p>
<p>6
[quote]
I would consider a B/B+ pretty good in college.
[/quote]
Recall that almost everyone coming here had a GPA close to 4, if not more.
But even so, you should not follow the "average GPA". This number is averaged throughout all majors, and throughout all kinds of people. Some majors are 'easier' grade-wise than others, and there are still quite many people here that sit in their rooms, studying and getting A's all the way. Ultimately, it will come down to your own will power and time managing skills.
But even so yet, assuming you do apply to a med school with a 3.3 GPA, you will be competing with many many 4.0 GPA holders from other colleges. Hence...</p>
<p>To be fair, Antiquark has answered this and other questions regarding Caltech premed much better than me in this</a> thread</p>
<p>I found that Core Classes were not intense at all and were in fact quite easy, especially since a lot of the material was review from AP classes. I think my freshman year I spent more time playing computer games than actually doing work; this has not been close to true until recently (it's my last term and I'm underloading). </p>
<p>It is definitely not true that people have no time to do anything. As an example, I've watched essentially every Houston Rockets game during my time here, that's 2.5-3 hours every other day for about 5-6 months, plus the playoffs. The work can get hectic in stretches but it's definitely possible to do fun stuff. </p>
<p>Not a premed, would rather not answer questions that I don't know answers to.</p>
<p>Yes, the average GPA here is a 3.3. That's because it is quite easy in general to get a B but quite hard to get an A. To get in top flight grad schools/med schools you'll need almost all A's, therefore a 3.3 is a low GPA here.</p>
<p>Ahhhh WHAT?!!!</p>
<p>(sorry :P )</p>
<p>What kind of GPA do you need to get into, say, MIT or Princeton for grad school?</p>
<p>Edit: I thought it was more of a combination of rec letters and GPA...</p>
<p>You most definitely do not need almost all As to get into top grad schools (for PhD programs.) I've known plenty of people with very average GPAs that got into excellent grad schools off of their research and recommendations. Most Caltech students who go on to grad school go to Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Berkeley, or Princeton, which are top schools in most scientific fields. For most subjects, any GPA over a 3.5 is going to have diminishing additional value. A couple of serious publications and a recommendation from someone well-known in your field trump any GPA. Also, grad schools will generally look upon a low GPA from Caltech a lot more kindly than that GPA from almost any other school. For med school, on the other hand, you're probably screwed if you have less than a 3.5. If you refuse to take any other paths than ones leading to med school, Caltech is going to be extremely academically risky, and likely not much fun.</p>
<p>As for core classes, you wouldn't have been admitted if you weren't capable of completing them successfully. I very much disagree that they were reviews of AP classes, with the exception of Ph 1a. If you went to a kind of lack-luster high school like I did, you'll probably find nearly all of the core classes quite challenging. That said, if you are spending even the majority of your waking hours frosh year on school work, you are doing something seriously wrong, and the solution is probably not to sleep less. Unless you do stupid things with your schedule, you should never feel like you're constantly doing work all of the time for greater than three or so days in a row.</p>
<p>I think Antiquark's post is pretty accurate. Frosh year was pretty chill for most of my friends (I had EE52... so slightly different third term, but first and second terms were nice). I thought core freshman year was relatively easy. Math stays easy, physics gets harder sophomore year--especially if you take phys 12. Also, ACM95 is more difficult than math (although not too bad) and is one of the most commonly taken non-core classes (all engineering majors require it I believe).</p>
<p>The importance of grades for admission into Ph.D programs definitely varies by field.
In almost any sort of experimental science/engineering there are people with low (sometimes <3.0) GPA admitted into top programs given lots of research experience/recommendations from famous people.
On the other hand in math, there are people here who were told by Profs that their poor grades in higher-level math classes (A- average, or so) would almost certainly disqualify them from admission into "top six" Ph.D programs (Harvard, Princeton, MIT, UChicago, Berkeley, Stanford). Anecdotally, even most Caltech applicants with near 4.0 (or higher) GPA's seem to often be rejected from all of these departments.
I also know a recent physics graduate who was told by his advisor that his B+'s in the first two terms of phys. 125 would make it difficult to get into top 20 physics programs if he applied as a "theory" applicant (although due to his research experience, if he applied as a "HEP experimentalist" he would get in everywhere).
This disparity is a function of both:
a) In some fields, like math, classwork is more indicative of your ability to do research than in others.
b)In fields where there are no experiments to run a lot fewer grad students are needed so admission is much more competitive.</p>
<p>Physics theory is a lot like math. High grades and GREs are almost required and the top programs are absurdly competitive. For experimental physics, chemistry, biology, or geology though, the effort to turn an A- into an A would probably be much better spent doing research during the term and getting something published. Engineering PhD programs are probably similar since they focus on research, but I have no clue how engineering masters programs work.</p>
<p>Whether a B+ in Ph 125 is "good" or "bad" depends so much on when it was taken. Often, a B+ is around average or only a little above average. Last term, the 125 grades for juniors went something like this: A: 5, B: 11, C: 17, F: 3. That's pretty harsh, especially when you consider the physics ability of the people in that class. Nearly everyone in that class is going to be applying to physics grad school, and those Cs are going to hurt a little regardless of subfield. A B+ last term would be pretty impressive.</p>
<p>what if I want to major in biology of chemistry?</p>
<p>From looking at the course distributions (I am NOT a bio/chem major, the last time I took bio I was very happy to get a B+ in Bi 9), most undergraduate bio/chem courses tend to have grades centered around B/B+. In addition, people in these majors tend to be not as good at math and physics as people who major in math or physics, and thus (on average) get worse grades in core. So if you're a pre-med bio major you will have more difficulty getting into med school than had you gone to any other decent school (there are a few premeds each year who manage a 4.1 GPA and get into top med schools- they would have also gotten into them had they gone anywhere else).
As far as applying to Ph.D programs and getting grad fellowships in biology/chemistry- research experience and recommendations from famous people will outweigh the B in orgo- most bio majors have no difficulty getting into top programs.</p>
<p>so in general success for grad school just depends on which professor you work with and what kind of great reserach you do? So...what if I go somewhere else for college and apply for things like Caltech SURF?</p>
<p>Regardless of what school you go to, if you do well in your classes, get a good recommendation from a big name (or two!) in your field, and get some first-author publications, you will get into good grad schools for biology/chemistry. However, the difficulty of Caltech prepares you exceptionally well for graduate level coursework, and the huge amount of cutting-edge research going on here makes it pretty easy to get the experience that graduate programs crave. ;) While you can get a SURF at Caltech while going to another school, it does seem to be harder than getting one as a Techer and you'll be missing the contact with professors that you would be getting from classes here. You also lose the ability to do research during the school year with whatever group you want to work with.</p>
<p>alright thanks guys!</p>
<p>I decided that I do really want to be a doctor and if not, I really don't have aspirations in becoming a researcher or anything theortical based, so I am going to take the waitlist offer :)</p>
<p>is SURF considered a prestige summer program btw?</p>
<p>tealover, SURF is no more "prestigious" than an REU anywhere else. Almost everyone at Caltech who applies gets a SURF, so it's not exclusive. But a SURF or REU is pretty much the best way to spend your summer if you want to go to grad school. Which you don't.</p>
<p>An undergrad preceptorship is a much better idea for a pre-med. Caltech offers one, but you can really only do it once and it doesn't pay anything, unlike SURF. Maybe you could work as an EMT for the summer instead to gain experience.</p>
<p>There is, in fact, no such thing as too much sleep.</p>