<p>Wait, you're not a girl? haha yeah, the "Gracie" sort of gives the wrong impression, I guess...</p>
<p>Yeah, I figured as much, but what is it specifically about the name? Like, what's the association people have when they read that name which makes them think it belongs to a girl? As far as I know, there isn't any indication of gender in it, it's not like "highschoolgurl45" or something. </p>
<p>I've always found such psycho-linguistic questions interesting....</p>
<p>Hmmm....as far as I've seen it, Gracie is always a girl's name. So it seems to have an indication of gender just in the way that "Ben Golub" does :p Is your name Gracie?</p>
<p>Yea, Gracie... definitely a girl's name as far as I thought.</p>
<p>Ha ha, that's pretty funny. Here's the association I was aiming for; </p>
<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Gracie%5B/url%5D">http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Gracie</a></p>
<p>If I were a Gracie, I wouldn't be studying math and science right now...</p>
<p>lol. We all see it as a girl's name. Pfft. Now we know :p</p>
<p>To find a few appropriate analogies to your situation Gracie, a better search would be <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=losing+battle%5B/url%5D">http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=losing+battle</a> :P</p>
<p>I actually did notice that GracieLegend did not ever explicitly say what his/her gender was, but I felt that refering to his/her posts in the third person in the manner used in this sentence was sort of awkward. Besides, I'm pretty sure Gracie is a girl's name. By the way, you still haven't explicitly said what your gender is, so now I'm confused. :)</p>
<p>VonWeber makes some good points. I don't think you can really know for certain whether a school will work for you until you try it. Of course, this stinks because if it turns out that it doesn't work for you, then you might end up in a rather messy situation as I described earlier where you can't transfer and a bunch of money basically gets lost down the drain. So you must do everything you can to make the right choice and then try to make the best of the situation once you begin next year. GracieLegend's suggestions are good; see as many of the houses as you can, meet as many students as you can, and go to some lectures if you have time (I guess PFW is truncated or something this year because of budget, which is unfortunate). Try to imagine what it would be like living and working there every day. </p>
<p>I really don't think I can pinpoint a specific 'kind' of person who would be happy at Caltech. Obviously, you need to like science and math more than pretty much everything else and you need to be able to handle the stress and heavy workload. You need to be able to work with others (or learn how quickly if you don't do this already), unless you're a supergenius or something. It seems like there are many students (or there were in my house anyway) who 'burn out' after a few years; I don't know why this happens to some people and not to others. I think it may partially be a difference in how you handle the stress. I for one was rather bad at managing the stress, so I kind of just snapped one afternoon and decided I couldn't take it anymore. </p>
<p>It's strange, when I visited the campus and was learning about tech in '04/'05, I never really noticed the unhappy students for some reason. I don't know if it's because I was blind to the fact that Caltech isn't perfect, or if it's simply because they tend to 'troll' and not express their opinions in settings such as this forum or PFW. They are certainly there. </p>
<p>My faculty adviser when I was at Caltech (a professor of physics and more recently biology) had a few words to say regarding the unhappy students in an e-mail regarding the transfer process that I would like to share:</p>
<p>"Over the years, I have talked with a number of advisees about transferring. It is a positive move for most, but in fact many stay, unhappily, who should have left..."</p>
<p>Those who remain unhappily would be the burn-outs I guess. Just remember if you do decide to go to Caltech, you're not married to it and you can choose to leave if it doesn't work out. You probably shouldn't be as hasty as I was in drawing conclusions about the school though, because I don't think my case was necessarily a typical one. </p>
<p>Incidentally, my adviser also made the following comment on the quality of teaching and the concern of professors for their undergrads at Caltech:</p>
<p>"I am a faculty member who cares about teaching, undergraduate students, and their Caltech environment. I have been here for over 40 years, doing that. But I am one among few...."</p>
<p>Interesting.</p>
<p>I guess I'll toss in my opinion.</p>
<p>I'm a frosh entering my third term right now. I must say I've been pretty pleased with the teaching. I actually really liked Math 1a (which is from what I gather a usually much-loathed class) and only wish I had more time to spend on it. I might add however a lot of students got ****ed off at the prof, claiming he didn't like taking questions. I don't think it's a very accurate claim as he generally did take questions, unless they were questions of how he got from one step to another which were merely exercises in algebra. I think another reason for a perceived dislike for questions is his brilliance (apparently he was a putnam fellow at 19 according to wikipedia). I don't think he was quite sure what students were asking, so he'd just answer some related issue and quickly move on thinking he had answered it. Either way, I rather liked his class and fast teaching style. Sure I didn't learn everything he said, but everything I needed to do well (not just pass) on the exams could be learned from the problem sets, so why bother limiting the lectures?</p>
<p>Learning physics was a struggle as David Goodstein (star of mech universe) is not his former self because he is old and had a stroke within the half year, but I anticipate he'll be better this fall. However, my TA was beyond awesome. I was in the "super section" and it was quite an exciting time decomposing difficult problems.</p>
<p>Chem 1a was also taught well. Exams weren't written so well...</p>
<p>My hum prof was also absolutely awesome.</p>
<p>APh 9 was a joke and not taught well, but it didn't matter as nothing was really tested... That class doesn't represent caltech very well...</p>
<p>Winter term wasn't been so great in terms of teaching I must say though.</p>
<p>I really liked my math prof once again. My math ta, like fall term, was brilliant and helpful.</p>
<p>Chem prof 1 was scatter-brained wasn't too great. Chem prof 2 was quite good, except the design of the curriculum was bad. I don't think so much ochem should have been packed into so short a time... Chem postdoc who lectured was very good I thought. Chem 1 exams were again written poorly.</p>
<p>My hum class was the most annoying class due to my prof's penchant for asking longwinded questions that lacked any real question.</p>
<p>phys prof was okay. he tried and he was very open to questions, but he just wasn't the best at public speaking and for a large part he was just copying out of the book. my phys ta was very boring indeed. i stopped going shortly after fall term started.</p>
<p>chem 3 (lab class with no lecturer) ta's weren't so great. one was nice, but not too knowledgeable. the other was mean, but knowledgeable. it was always a dilemma as to which to ask. in general, i don't think the class served as a good introduction because it expected frosh to know a lot more about chem technique than i think it ought have.</p>
<p>On a different note, caltech really offers a crazy level of opportunities. i'm playing on the tennis team at an intercollegiate level. i have an awesome research opportunity in front of me with an mentor that is really looking after me. i've been to a lecture given by midori and gotten her autograph and a photo with her, for free. i might go see the marriage of figaro next week, for free.</p>
<p>i think one thing that doesn't get mentioned as much, is the true intimacy of the campus. i've played basketball with profs and eaten at their tables. i live in avery, so i live with profs and i've been able to talk to many profs at faculty-student dessert nights and just dessert nights they hold for us during finals/midterm weeks. besides with profs, i really feel connected with the upperclassmen. i've really come to love the seniors in my dorm. it's totally awesome having them on campus, living with you, available for you, whether it be for advice on choosing classes or to go play ultimate. another aspect is just the way the dorms are set up. since they are "houses" and not "residence halls" you feel a lot closer to people. i've visited friends during break at berkeley, ucla, and ucsd, and it's really different. instead of feeling just like a living arrangement, the houses really do feel like houses. there is no need to exit your floor or suite or building to go find someone else, because they are all living with you, granted this is because there are so few people so there aren't that many people outside of your house to actually go see, but it is still quite nice to me.</p>
<p>yea, i really need to do something productive. that's what sucks about caltech, so many opportunities and not enough time. it's like that one guy who was stuck in the pond with the fruit overhanging him.</p>
<p>Hehehe, </p>
<p>Didn't really understand your last comment but it made me laugh... in a </p>
<p>"it's late and if it's a sentence with the verb stuck, and the nouns guy, fruit, and pond then it's gotta be funny" </p>
<p>kinda way. </p>
<p>Thanks for being so thorough in describing your personal experience. That was helpful and comforting for me.</p>
<p>Uh...Tantalus?</p>