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Wasn't rejected by anyplace, though. Gave me great pleasure to turn down MIT, as a matter of fact!
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<p>gee, why, Joe? My son and I both felt kind of depressed when he turned down Caltech to accept MIT. They are both wonderful places, with more similarities than differences compared to other schools. It was a difficult decision for him, and I wish he could attend both. (that's why I'm still reading the Caltech forum. Love that school! Can't quite move on.).</p>
<p>I was always hoping to meet you, texas137
always found your posts helpful</p>
<p>The pleasure came more from a decision well-made, and made for wholly the right reasons. So many people are swayed by the MIT "name" when faced with this decision. People from my corner of Michigan (many of whom didn't really know MIT all that well, and who had never heard of Caltech, largely) thought it foolish, but I felt pretty good about going where I knew was right for me.</p>
<p>I can see it in the eyes of some of the prefrosh, in fact: "I really want to be here, but my parents/friends/teachers/self just can't let me turn down MIT! I mean, it's MIT!" It wasn't really my job to change their minds, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel sort of sorry for them. At the same time, as one who had already "taken the plunge" and found Caltech to be everything I had hoped for and more, I felt happy that I had not been tempted away as they were about to be.</p>
<p>I think, in a way, Caltech benefits from not having the "name," in that the students who do pick it over MIT are those who feel enthusiastic enough about it to overcome the "name."</p>
<p>Looking back, I can say that the 3 or 4 nicest things (professionally/academically speaking) in my life would almost certainly NOT have happened for me at MIT (or indeed at any other large school--but I wasn't really considering any others). It was just precisely the right environment for me, and I thank God that I made the decision I did whenever I think back on it.</p>
<p>Sounds like you really got a kick out of Tech, but you still owe me an explanation of what you thought about E&AS Aeronautics. :-D</p>
<p>Right! Sorry, I forgot about that.</p>
<p>It's a very small program at the undergrad level (my class had 6 Aero majors, and that was more than usual, actually--though the people who do it tend to be pretty into it). The classes you'll take will be pretty much the same as the Mechanical Engineering curriculum up through your junior year (since Aero and MechE are really very similar disciplines in the first place--Aero is just MechE specialized for things that fly, basically), but senior year you will have Aero courses in aircraft design, flight control, propulsion, and advanced fluid mechanics. There are also electives offered in things like spacecraft design, biofluids, etc.</p>
<p>Everything is taught sort of with the assumption that you're likely to go to grad school--now, plenty of people do go right to industry after their B.S., but the "default" path that most Caltech Aero majors take will be straight to grad school. Of the 6 of us my year, 5 went to grad school (2 to MIT, 1 each to Michigan, Stanford, and Purdue) and 1 went off to work for Lockheed.</p>
<p>There are 9-10 Aero profs at Caltech, which means that there are nearly as many students as profs. Thus, it's really, really easy to get a summer or term-time lab job working in whatever lab you'd like to. I took advantage of this and would really recommend it to anyone else in the Aero program, especially if you want to go to grad school. The research experience is a BIG leg-up in grad school admissions--and all the better that it's likely to come with a well-known professor who (because of the small size) will get to know you well enough to write a very personalized and specific letter of recommendation.</p>
<p>Sounds great. Thanks!</p>
<p>Did you ever work with Dr. Gharib? I'm SURFing with him in a month.</p>
<p>Nope, sorry, I did my research work mostly with Joe Shepherd and Chris Brennen (who is MechE).</p>
<p>Wow, so many CMUs... O_o In response to the too-old CMU vs Cornell question, I'd definitely say CMU. I go to CMU but have many friends at Cornell, and after plenty of discussions about both while I was deciding where to go, plus going there for 1 yr so far, I prefer my school. Of course now I also have an obvious bias, & I'm an art student. I'm not quite sure how I ever wandered in here, lol.</p>
<p>Doesn't Caltech have a really low yield....something like 30%??? CMU and even Berkely have better yields.</p>
<p>Also, MIT website reports that a full 60% of students currently attending Caltech were rejects from MIT!! </p>
<p>I'm sorry, but any school that gets such a low volume of applications can't be all that well known or popular. Almost nobody at my school thinks caltech is worth applying to.....it's too expensive, and too lopsided with fuglies to be any fun!</p>
<p>Caltech has its unique traits that make it attractive to certain students. Let's just leave it at that.</p>
<p>To the troll making the next-to-last post: Three things (1) No, Caltech's yield is higher than that.</p>
<p>(2) The article on the MIT website is about 10 years old IIRC. Get some current data.</p>
<p>(3) Go away. This board isn't for trolls.</p>
<p>Lopsided... with... fuglies.</p>
<p>Sigh. I will never understand why people get so concerned (and nasty) about the perceived lack of Beautiful People at tech schools. I mean, say you're at some dumb-as-rocks state school with scads of Abercrombie models surrounding you. Does this somehow make you a happer college student? Perplexing.</p>
<p>All the other school with renowns in biology</p>
<p>That was an interesting... non-sentence, quite lacking in verbs.</p>
<p>I just wrote list of nouns(schools) with modifying phrase("with renowns in biology") at the end. Is it grammartically incorrect..? Sorry, I am not a native.</p>
<p>Yes, but what does it mean -- you listed some schools, but what were you saying about them? Were you answering a question? It's not clear which question... </p>
<p>In general, yes, a putative sentence not containing any verb is not grammatically correct. It is like saying "Weasels, rabbits, and other animals with fur." Not very clear what it means.</p>
<p>I answer to the question "What's your second choice"</p>
<p>Ohhhhhhhhhhh I see now. The original thread was about the next-best school you got into and turned down. But I had even forgotten the main topic since threads tend to wander so far off topic. Anyway, very sorry : ). Glad you're on the board.</p>