Kamikazewave

Haha. I loved reasons 1-3. Doing those leads to reasons 4-6.

Also, is the comic crippling depressions representative of Caltech life?

Craig Montuori

Joe, remind me to tell you about the time they moved the "bouncy castle" into one of the House courtyards... my eyes were scared afterwards, is all I'll say. Ben, remember that post-hot tub day? It was that group we used to hang with.

I'll add the reason I came to Caltech (foolishly): To be close to JPL. I love engineering, taking things apart and seeing what makes 'em tick. I thought I'd have access to that at Caltech. I have found that they primarily want code-monkeys (and smart ones at that) from Techers. As a caveat to the above, I know of some people have found their way into nifty (ion thrusters) projects.

I've found other reasons to stay, but that was my reason for coming here. It was shot to pieces around week 2 of first term or so. I was pleasantly miserable to be around, which I think Ben would agree with.

neapol1s

Lizzardfire, I think I speak for all of us when I say I wish his plan had suceeded.

(Just kidding)

Ben Golub

4. Do not rely on collaboration any more than you really have to. A big focus of frosh camp is how you will have to learn to work with others to get things done, and how you won't be able to go it alone anymore like you did in high school. There is a sense in which this is good advice, but it nevertheless tends to be given and taken the wrong way, with bad effects for learning.

Let me explain what I mean a little more fully. To drive home the point about how good collaboration is, people often tell prefrosh and frosh that the Core problem sets are way too hard to do alone, and that they have to be done as a team effort. I confess to having used this rhetorical trick to drive home the point about collaboration.

However, this is a lie. For most students, the Math 1, Phys 1, and Chem 1 problem sets are not too difficult to solve alone. Anyone who leaves about seven or eight hours for a set spread over three or four days will work out almost all the problems. Nor does it take superhuman time management to arrange your schedule in this way. (More on that in a later post.)

Telling frosh how wonderful and necessary collaboration is has the perverse effect of encouraging many of them to rely solely or mostly on collaborative effort to do the homework. Realistically, the collaborative groups never begin working before the night the homework is due. (Really "morning the set is due" is closer to the truth.) Thus, those who take seriously the advice about how the sets are too hard to do alone end up doing them in a sleep-deprived, confused, and rushed way. They also don't get the intellectual exercise that comes from going down the wrong paths and figuring out what is right on your own.

It's much better for your brain – and just more fun – to solve a lot of the problems yourself. Collaboration (or talking with a TA in section) is great for getting the last insight to help you solve a particularly hard problem. Too many people use it, instead, as a crutch to severely reduce the number of problems they conquer by fighting it out one-on-one. That deficit of experience builds up and hurts you in the long run.

Develop some pride and consider it a small defeat to get help on something you could have figured out yourself. Be ready and willing to ask for help on a problem, but only after you've given it your best on your own for at least an hour. You deserve nothing less.

Ben Golub

5. Collaborate when you should. Don't develop too much pride. After you've fought with a problem for enough time that no useful insights seem to be coming (perhaps in several sittings), give it a rest. Think of a person or group of people that you think will be able to help you get the crucial idea. This might be a study group of friends in your House, a TA, a professor, an upperclassman, whoever. Think carefully about how you would formulate the question and what precisely is stumping you. Practice asking it in your head.

Why so much thinking and practicing? It turns out that about half the time, this is exactly when the answer will come to you. Once you think about posing it coherently to someone else, your own brain will tell you the answer.

But if not, go ask. Talk about it to a few people. Some will have thought about the question, some not. (More will have thought about it as the deadline approaches.) It often takes just a little bit to get you on the right path. The "unproductive" time you spent getting nowhere often turns out to be quite useful once you get the missing ingredient. You will also find that this collaboration is much more pleasant than staying up all night desperately trying to do everything all at once.

I also hope it's clear that there is no honor in handing in no solution or a bad solution just because you were too proud to ask for help to push you past the difficult parts. The smartest people I know are fiercely determined to figure things out, but if they don't, they would much rather defeat the problem with someone else's help than to be defeated by it.

Craig Montuori

With the above said, I'm told things are easier than they used to be at Tech, in decades past. The purpose of sets was not necessarily to finish them, but to stretch your brain. It was also to show you limits in that some things are still beyond you... but you should be reaching out to understand them, which is where the prof came in, at that time. You spent your time trying to figure things out, then discussed them in class. Even the smartest people here weren't expected to finish everything. But then I suppose grade inflation has infected even here, somewhat.

These days, expect to get first principles thrown at you. Essentially, you reinvent the wheel in every class with almost every problem. Figure out the homeworks? Good, the tests have nothing to do with them, aside from basic principles. It's trial by fire in learning how to think. This is how collaboration is sometimes useful, sometimes not. Use other people to help you develop your thought processes, not /as/ your thought processes.

magd

Just want to thank Ben Golub for post #2. I'd been seriously considering Caltech, and I even visited the campus last year. But now, rather sadly, actually, I realize that science, for me, isn't the all-consuming passion required of a techie. I also realize that my motivation for applying was rather muddied by the lure of Pasadena and other social factors. So... I must resist the temptation to read this board in future and continue the search for another school. I remain, however, very grateful for Ben's post as it did force me to examine more closely my reasons for applying -- I'm amazed at how cavalier I was in approaching this whole college app. exercise!

Joe (Caltech '04)

I should just say that science isn't my "all-consuming passion," either...

lizzardfire

if magd stands for Maggie, please apply. We need more females!!!

Class of 2010 = 28%. Twenty-eight percent!

*cries softly in the corner*

Ben Golub

I should note that I never said all-consuming. Just sufficiently consuming that you are willing to make sacrifices for it.

I am always torn about advice like that. On the one hand, whenever I emphasize how much commitment and effort are required to succeed and be happy at Tech, I worry about scaring away some people. On the other hand, if we pretend it is a fuzzy place where everybody can be happy, then we risk creating quite a few unhappy people. Sooo...

(One prefrosh changed her mind from MIT, so it is 29% now.)

justanothermom

Does any of you know what's the total size of the class of 2010?

magd

Thank you lizzardfire -- I do like feeling encouraged! And Joe, thanks for your qualification (and for meeting me earlier this summer -- though I was intimidated). But, back to Ben's remarks.... Now, he may not have specifically written "all consuming," but when I read that I should be prepared to give up "important things in my life" (ummmm, like a social life, the beach, art galleries?), "a lot of immediate pleasure" (ummmm, lizzardfire?), and to prepare to enjoy "pain" (although, that I think I can deal with), then I defiinitely inferred something approaching "all-consuming..." whatever. There must something, though, that's making me continue to stalk this site. Guess I'll have to visit again.
Oh, do you think the idea of being part of a 28/29% minority is a good enough reason to apply?
Humor aside, I do love science/math; I was decidedly energized after a visit to MIT (including classes) earlier this year; and I enjoy challenges. It's just that I have a problem doing any one thing to the exclusion of other activities I enjoy (and there are many of those). Keep me posted -- I'm really equivocating about EA now.

Ben Golub

Yay!

I certainly didn't mean you have to give up most of your other activities (though it could plausibly be read that way, for which I apologize). I read for pleasure at Caltech more than I did in high school, just to take one example; Joe did 11 million extracurricular things, etc. By "important things in your life" I meant "always feeling like you're great at the things you do academically" -- like you almost certainly did in high school; "being comfortable with your level of knowledge and cleverness" -- which you will sometimes have to give up, etc.

The main cost of Caltech psychologically, I think, is giving up a great deal of comfort to be stretched and made stronger. It doesn't mean some kind of monastic existence unless you want it to be.

Ben Golub

I will post the next bit of advice now, though I continue to welcome comments/sharp objects regarding previous bits.

6. Care. Almost nobody who doesn't care about what they are doing succeeds at Caltech. (Sweeping generalization: … or in life.) If you want to be happy, you have to find somewhere – anywhere – the motivation to keep you going.

Doing well and being happy are much easier if you are passionate about the things you spend most of your time on than if you are not. If you are driven by the idea of learning enough math to breeze through grad school in three years and proving big theorems in your early twenties, you will gladly put in more hours than you ever would just for a grade or if you were being paid by the hour (even $100 an hour). If you want to build the next Google, you will devote yourself to debugging your programs in a way you never could if you just cared about getting into a good grad school.

Casual observation suggests that passion is much more important than innate ability past a certain cutoff (roughly the cutoff for getting into Caltech). Less smart people often do vastly more for themselves and for the world than smarter people, just by dint of being more motivated to succeed.

So be motivated about what you do and figure out how to do what motivates you. Keep asking yourself what's in it for you – what about this field of study deserves your devotion? If the answer comes out to be "nothing" and stays that way for more than a month, worry. (Do not worry, however, if your motivation flags for a day or a week. That is guaranteed to happen and is normal.) Ask yourself what you do care about and see if it's possible to focus on that, instead – even if that means leaving Caltech. Ask yourself whether taking a term or two off would help you refocus and find yourself again. Consider whether some counseling might help you get rid of issues in your life that prevent you from being motivated.

Lives lived without passion are often tragic. It matters little how impressive your work is if you do not like doing it. It is better to do something mundane or undistinguished with joy and zeal than to do something sublime and incredible in a state of misery or boredom.

The worst thing that can happen to you is not caring that you've lost your passion, and just going through the motions anyway. Make yourself a promise that you will be honest with yourself about whether you still love what you are doing, and that you will deal with it if the answer is "no".

Joe (Caltech '04)

I think, from what I'm reading, that Ben is a little more hardcore about Caltech than I was. I'm not saying that in a negative way. Heck, Ben quite probably gets more than I did out of Caltech, especially on the academic side. I just sort of felt like I was doing what I needed to get done and if I took a particular interest in something (science or not), I'd do more of that. I never felt like I was shut off from anything or giving anything up "for science." I was busy but I don't think it was a monastic existence at all. In particular, if you actually start homework early instead of the night before, you'll have time to finish your work AND goof off, without the work hanging over your head. I didn't learn this, or it didn't sink in, until after my freshman year, but it's 100% the truth.

What some people at Caltech do is NOT, in fact, work all the time, but spend all week whining and getting stressed... and then cap it off by starting the set the night before and having to rush through. This is not a recipe for happiness, because even the time you weren't actually working wasn't relaxing or fun. Better to spend an hour or so each day on each set and live a more balanced life. Easier said than done, but definitely possible.