For Protofrosh

“将军，我们已经有一个礼拜没有吃到冰淇淋了！” — 《甲方乙方》(1997)

“General, it’s been a week since we’ve eaten ice cream！” — The Dream Factory (1997)

Introduction

In this post, I will try to be objective and informative in order to help admits decide whether they should come to Caltech. Guiding questions discussed:

1. What is Caltech?
2. Who is Caltech?
3. Where is Caltech?
4. Why is Caltech?
5. How is Caltech?

What

Caltech is a scientist factory. Of course, people do other things, but science is the main focus of the school. There are some English majors and some Business majors, but they are usually double majors.

Students should be prepared to spend most of their time on coursework, but your surplus time depends on your desire to get good grades. If you only half-try on homework, you could get away with more time for other things.

Clubs

There is definitely time for hobbies, just less than at other universities. I noticed that larger schools have greater club diversity in terms of the rare ones, but we do have all of the essential clubs.

Difficulty

I heard that sophomore and junior year are hard while freshman and senior year are easy (relative to each other). This factory’s first quarter report states that the first quarter of the first fiscal year is going well. However, there are many difficult classes down the road that require a lot of effort to understand properly.

By the way, Caltech uses a trimester/quarter system with fall, winter, and spring terms + summer vacation.

Cost

For domestic students, Caltech is need-blind. To see the conditions for receiving aid, go to https://www.admissions.caltech.edu/afford.

With that aside, Caltech graduates have a median starting salary of $120K, which is one of the highest in the country.

Who

Beyond science, there are a variety of interests shared by different subsets of students, such as art, music, video games, partying, sports, etc.

Diversity

Just like everywhere else, there isn’t a lot of interaction between people with very different interests and personalities (by choice), but most people are nice to interact with on a surface level.

Racially, there are a lot of East Asians compared to similar schools, for more demographics, go to https://inclusive.caltech.edu/about/demographic-data.

Parties

A slight tangent, but you are mistaken if you believe that there are no parties here. It’s just that there are two camps of people who enjoy and don’t enjoy partying. There’s plenty of company for people interested in either group.

Size

A small student body means that you will know many people’s names, not that you will be friends with all of them. Note that there is a house system, and the house you rotate into mostly defines the people that you will interact with on a daily basis.

Eccentricity

Everyone here is pretty eccentric in some way, but the only kind of person that likely only exists at low-acceptance-rate university like this one is the deeply mistrusting, antisocial, and grind-focused LinkedIn user. However, you probably won’t see them.

Overall, everyone has a nice personality. Upperclassmen may do a bit of trolling, a bit of occasional sophism, but they are very serious when they need to be.

Where

The campus is located in northeast LA in the city of Pasadena (around 90 minutes from airport).

Weather

It’s dry during most of the year due to its Mediterranean climate, except for the winter rainy season (dry subtropical). It’s very hot during noon and gets mildly chilly at night. The coldest it’s been so far is 11 degrees Celsius. As a New England Yankee, I enjoy the temperature more, but the lack of red and rainy autumn leaves feels off. As a Shanghairen, it’s nice to know that hot and humid storms will still be around.

Amenities

There are quite a few nice restaurants near campus, and of course there are a lot of things to do in Los Angeles (museums, beaches, concerts, sports games, etc.). Most travel is by walking or car because there is no subway. Many students go to the beaches or concerts on weekends.

House food is mediocre, but Broad Cafe > Red Door Cafe > Browne Dining Hall are around a 7.5/10. I think people here who say the food is bad are just picky.

Safety

According to CrimeGrade.org, for overall crime, Pasadena is in the 48th percentile for safety, so 48% of cities in the nation are more dangerous.

Personally, I cannot really speak to the safety because I have not been here long enough. However, I feel safe basically all of the time. The only time I didn’t was when there was a mentally ill person yelling into a phone in the middle of the street next to the gas station.

Why

From the career perspective, the two main potential benefits of Caltech are getting to a good university for a STEM PhD and/or making a lot of money.

Potential Careers

Admissions actually really dislikes people who plan to go straight into software engineering. But also, if you want to do that, it’s better to go somewhere in San Francisco because there are more tech companies there.

If you want to be a PhD scientist in biology, chemistry, physics, CS, there aren’t many better places to go. Most undergrads get into very good PhD programs for whatever they want.

Learning

From the perspective of learning, there are numerous seminars given each week in every field by visiting speakers from many companies and universities.

In terms of networking, there are numerous great professors in every field available for SURFs in their labs. Most undergraduates do research with professors during their time here. The alumni network is also quite large, but I can’t really speak to the validity of translation from degree to job based on those connections since I’m a first term frosh.

How

Most classes are undercredited, which means that they give less credits than the work required. Good teaching professors are hard to find, and the classes with good teachers are often full before it is possible to register.

Course Selection

Contrary to the narrative that a smaller school means you don’t need to fight for classes, it’s hard to get a good humanities class because the ones that people want are filled immediately, and 108 humanities credits are required for graduation, so an average of one humanities per term.

However, you can definitely get spots in basically all classes that are required except for some that are enrollment limited. I looked through a lot of the popular majors and counted only about 20 courses in total that have limited enrollment, many of which aren’t even required.

The People

The best part of Caltech is the people, there’s no denying it. I’ve met many people who I think I’ll be friends with for the rest of my life, but it would also be true at other schools. The next natural question is, “Which location has the best people for me?” The answer is nowhere and everywhere at once because the amount that people match you at each location is on a distribution. Drawing a few people at random, you will likely meet a few people on the right side of the distribution at any place you go.

If the place you go has less people in total, you get to draw a larger proportion of its given distribution (with a larger chance of encountering good people), if the place you go has more people, there will be more good people to draw from. I think it comes out to about the same in this aspect.

However, as an introvert, it takes more energy for me to meet new people than for an extrovert, so I naturally draw less people from the deck. With this consideration, I think it’s better to go to a place with less people because if I encounter the same number of people at a place with less people and a place with more, I simply do not see a large enough slice at a place with a lot of people.

Match Percentage Probability Distribution

Memories

College is also about making good memories, and I’ve already made a lot, including:

• A lot of from rotation (secret)
• Midnight trip to Long Beach + Cane’s
• Ph 10 Field trip to Palomar Observatory
• Howling at hyenas with friends
• Performing music live & karaoke xN
• Jam Room & Avery Music Room
• Lunar ring and solar eclipse
• Going to LA Kings Hockey Game
• Learning to freeskate
• Watching AOT final episode with friend
• Ratatouvery
• Ricketts Thanksgiving
• Going out with friends xN
• Meeting Kip Thorne and Lia Halloran
• Flea market

Some things I plan to do:

• See a music concert
• See a comedy show (21+)
• Visit all the beaches (going to Santa Monica and Venice on Dec 15)
• Iceskating
• Visit museums
• TA a class

Conclusion

So, you may have gathered that if you have a choice between many places, your experience will probably not change drastically.

Paraphrasing my high school math teacher Mr. P, making the right choice is not as important as making the choice right.

Furthermore, before you actually go through with a decision, you have no true information on which one is better, and you never will.

Life is like a box of chocolates, so you might as well just eat one.