| You most definitely do not need almost all As to get into top grad schools (for PhD programs.) I've known plenty of people with very average GPAs that got into excellent grad schools off of their research and recommendations. Most Caltech students who go on to grad school go to Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Berkeley, or Princeton, which are top schools in most scientific fields. For most subjects, any GPA over a 3.5 is going to have diminishing additional value. A couple of serious publications and a recommendation from someone well-known in your field trump any GPA. Also, grad schools will generally look upon a low GPA from Caltech a lot more kindly than that GPA from almost any other school. For med school, on the other hand, you're probably screwed if you have less than a 3.5. If you refuse to take any other paths than ones leading to med school, Caltech is going to be extremely academically risky, and likely not much fun.
As for core classes, you wouldn't have been admitted if you weren't capable of completing them successfully. I very much disagree that they were reviews of AP classes, with the exception of Ph 1a. If you went to a kind of lack-luster high school like I did, you'll probably find nearly all of the core classes quite challenging. That said, if you are spending even the majority of your waking hours frosh year on school work, you are doing something seriously wrong, and the solution is probably not to sleep less. Unless you do stupid things with your schedule, you should never feel like you're constantly doing work all of the time for greater than three or so days in a row. |