why you should come to caltech

<p>1) we flood our courtyards regularly</p>

<p>2) ditch day</p>

<p>3) we have a ddr machine in the basement</p>

<p>4) we have a ball pit. like xkcd but in real life</p>

<p>5) murals in the steam tunnels</p>

<p>6) awesome dinner traditions</p>

<p>7) the problem sets are interesting and make you think</p>

<p>8) when i took analysis at my local state school it was about as hard as freshman calculus here (but the kids were dumber)</p>

<p>9) people can teach you how to use linux</p>

<p>10) all our exams are take-home (even closed-book, timed exams). it is literally against the rules for professors to proctor exams because it violates the trust they're supposed to have in the students</p>

<p>11) it is really easy to find a research job. the professors have really good equipment. (and really good ideas)</p>

<p>12) undergrads doing research at caltech get paid more than the grad students ($6000 for 10 weeks, and you can apply for a research job here even if you don't go here)</p>

<p>13) our extra credit project in bi 1 was to cure aids, and one guy actually got his proposal funded by the gates foundation</p>

<p>14) things they told me at the tour guide meeting: caltech graduates have the highest average starting salary of any university (like 71k/yr). caltech has the second highest number of patents of any university (the first being the ENTIRE uc system). caltech does not do affirmative action.</p>

<p>15) students get keys to buildings so we can turn in math sets at 4am</p>

<p>16) it is really cool being around people smarter than you</p>

<p>17) on halloween we freeze pumpkins in liquid nitrogen and drop them off the tallest building in pasadena. it makes an awesome-looking splat</p>

<p>18) we have this thing called the ascit screening room in our basement which has a zillion movies and is literally a mini-movie theater. as you can see we have an awesome basement</p>

<p>19) the food stations in the cafeteria are labeled things like "comfort equation" and "tech tonics"</p>

<p>20) the weather here is perfect</p>

<p>21) we have a chipotle within walking distance</p>

<p>22) one of our ditch day stacks this year involved rappelling off a three-story parking garage</p>

<p>23) everyone takes the same classes frosh year so it's easy to find people to work with</p>

<p>24) the first two terms are on pass-fail</p>

<p>25) our chem 1a professor threw alkali metals into millikan pond</p>

<p>26) if you get good grades here, it actually means something</p>

<p>27) most of our problem sets are designed to be worked on in groups, so people mostly try and help each other instead of worrying about grades</p>

<p>28) everyone takes quantum mechanics</p>

<p>29) despite being kicked out of caltech twice i really hope they take me back</p>

<p>30) i would not trade my caltech experience for anything in the world</p>

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</p>

<p><em>grumblegrumble</em></p>

<p>i never knew that either until a grad student told me</p>

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</p>

<p>There is actually no rule against professors proctoring exams. I have had an in class, proctored exam. They are very rare though.</p>

<p>I am just having nightmares about Antsos now. Not sure if that qualifies as “proctored” though.</p>

<p>Oh, that. Yeah, I definitely blocked that from my memory. I was thinking of 151 which was regular in-class exams.</p>

<p>In response to your post on your thread yesterday: thanks, I’m checking out BEM right now. I forgot to ask, btw: how good is the Caltech FA for internationals? </p>

<p>@dLo and lizzardfire: Thanks for the heads-ups you two gave me yesterday, might have saved me a lot of application fees… although I still want to find out more about Caltech before deciding whether or not to apply.</p>