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MIT is unpredictable these days and Stanford values non-academic activites a lot in admission. Rejection there doesn’t tell you anything about your abilities.</p>
<p>No one gets accepted to Caltech on luck. It could ne for the other schools they had a lot of similar kids and wanted more diverse interests represented. Or, you were too diverse/unique/pure science for them. Don’t doubt yourself. Be thrilled and proud you were accepted.</p>
<p>My son is a junior there and according to him (which I assume is correct but who knows) the average student graduating from Caltech has a 3.7 GPA.</p>
<p>A 3.7 as the average GPA for Caltech seems unlikely, as “graduation with honors” is awarded to 3.5 and above. I’d imagine it’d be closer to 3.4 or so. Caltech’s pretty tough for most people.</p>
<p>What a change from my UG years. CalTech was proud of failing out 1/3 of the freshman class in the early 80s. I concur that being smart but not having a good work ethic used to get you killed. I hear now that the drop out rate is more like 5%, so they must have eased up quite a bit.</p>
<p>Hm, seems a degree from Caltech has been under going devaluated.</p>
<p>"I hear now that the drop out rate is more like 5%, so they must have eased up quite a bit. "</p>
<p>It hasn’t eased up. CalTech now has a much wider [ international] pool of top applicants to choose from.</p>
<p>I went back and checked my notes from the parent meeting I went to while S1 was at prefrosh weekend, according to those notes the dean said the average gpa of a Caltech graduate was 3.4. </p>
<p>I also think less kids dropout from all colleges as admissions are much more competitive and colleges are working to keep their kids in school. (They spend a lot of money on those kids, above and beyond tuition, and they want to hold on to that investment.)</p>
<p>I seriously doubt that higher quality is the reason for the lower dropout rate. Two profs I know who’ve taught for multiple decades at Tech say that there has been a conscious effort to ease up since the late eighties. But of course I can’t prove this.</p>
<p>Someone who wanted to could compare Math 1 and Phy 1 finals from 1980 and 2010 and see how they were graded and then see how the courses were curved. But at least one prof I’ve spoken to told me flat out that they aren’t as rough as they used to be. In fact he said that although many students are “very bright” perhaps “smarter” than before, they’re less prepared for tough work and less able to handle multiple failures than before. This matches the general trend I saw at another top ranked school that wasn’t at Caltech’s level. Students had higher test scores but many were less well prepared for college than before (mid 80s compared to early 2000s).</p>
<p>I will never be able to enter Caltech but I am terribly impressed and envious of the learning experience that Caltech undergrads get, esp. where they say, you WILL be able to solve any problem if given enough time. How does Caltech achieve it, how can I achieve that on my own? What kind of mathematical curriculum should I create for myself to get to such a place (be able to solve any problems ever)?</p>
<p>Caltech is awesome and is my dream school, although I can never dare to apply there. And I envy you guys who are studying (or at least applying) there. You folks have an awesome opportunity to actually learn, create and disseminate knowledge. USE IT BEST… will be my two cents. </p>
<p>Sorry to bump in uninvited…</p>