vidu

Hi! I am an extremely outgoing person and am interested in the applied sciences and math. But I would also love to discover what the other fields have to offer. As of now, i have declared electrical engineering as my intended major.

I'm up against some tough decision making.Though I have an excellent aid offer from Stanford, I am not sure if that is a better choice than Caltech for my interests. I have a good aid from that school too. Is Stanford less popular for engineering?

vossron

If you're interested in eventual grad school, you might want to factor in this data:


Percentage of grads getting PhDs
Academic field: All Engineering, Hard Science, and Math

PhDs and Doctoral Degrees:
ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database

Number of Undergraduates:
ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database

Note:
Does not include colleges with less than
1000 graduates over the ten year period

1 34% California Institute of Technology
2 24% Harvey Mudd College
3 16% Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4 10% Reed College
5 9% Rice University
6 8% Swarthmore College
7 8% Princeton University
8 7% Carleton College
9 7% New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
10 7% University of Chicago
11 7% Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
12 7% Case Western Reserve University
13 6% Harvard University
14 6% Carnegie Mellon University
15 6% Johns Hopkins University
16 6% Haverford College
17 6% Grinnell College
18 6% Cornell University, All Campuses
19 5% Kalamazoo College
20 5% Stanford University
21 5% Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
22 5% Yale University
23 5% Cooper Union
24 5% Oberlin College
25 5% Lawrence University
26 5% Bryn Mawr College
27 5% Williams College
28 5% Pomona College
29 4% Colorado School of Mines
30 4% Bowdoin College
31 4% Earlham College
32 4% Brown University
33 4% University of Rochester
34 4% University of California-Berkeley
35 4% Wabash College
36 4% Duke University
37 4% Worcester Polytechnic Institute
38 4% Amherst College
39 4% Stevens Institute of Technology
40 4% St Olaf College
41 4% Hendrix College
42 4% Beloit College
43 4% University of Missouri, Rolla
44 4% University of California-San Francisco
45 4% Occidental College
46 4% Alfred University, Main Campus
47 4% Allegheny College
48 4% Whitman College
49 4% College of Wooster
50 4% SUNY College of Environmental Sci & Forestry
51 4% Mount Holyoke College
52 4% Bates College
53 4% College of William and Mary
54 4% Knox College
55 3% Franklin and Marshall College
56 3% Georgia Institute of Technology, Main Campus
57 3% Washington University
58 3% Long Island University Southampton Campus
59 3% Macalester College
60 3% University of California-San Diego

bluebayou

if you want to discover "other fields" than Stanford is a no-brainer since it offers lots of other fields, in contrast to Caltech. And, of course, Stanford is the #2 engineering school in the country (secon to MIT), well connected with financial luminaries in Silicon Valley, etc.

patlees88

stanford hands down. you say that you would like to explore different academic areas, so stanford is a better fit. Caltech is a very specialized school, almost entirely focused on engineering. Besides, Stanford's engineering in itself is among top 3 and it can't get any better to start with. Besides, for an outgoing person like you, Stanford's social scene will provide way more options than Caltech.

menloparkmom

For your interests and personality you can't beat Stanford. Caltech is small, geeky and research oriented. Taking classes at Caltech has been described as similar to "drinking water from a fire hose" - fast paced and intense. Their Humanities offerings are weak compared to Stanford. Their focus is math and science. If you want the chance to take classes in other areas go to Stanford.

collegealum314

" Caltech is a very specialized school, almost entirely focused on engineering. "

This is incorrect. Caltech has more of a theoretical/pure sciences slant and culture than an engineering one.

It's also worth noting that you can take humanities classes at the Claremont Colleges (sp?) if you are a Caltech student. I don't know if this is convenient though.

Antiquark

Caltech shares some art and music programs with Occidental College and the Art Center College of Design, but I don't know many people who take humanities classes at other places. While none of Caltech's humanities are very prestigious, it does have a reasonably large course offering considering the number of students. Everyone has to take on average one humanity or social science class a term to graduate (on top of ~4 math/science/engineering classes a term.) A lot of people opt to have a humanity or SS major in addition of their "technical" one, but if you're not pretty certain you want to major in math, science, or engineering as your primary field, Stanford is way better.

I personally was very interested in history, philosophy, and political science in high school, and I've gotten to take interesting classes in all of the those fields at Caltech. For most students' purposes, the humanities and SS course offerings are fine and are generally well-taught. If you're really interested in a particular obscure humanities subfield, though, unless it just happens to be the field of interest of a tenured professor here, Stanford is going to be better for you academically.

You can check out Caltech's course offerings here. Some of the more specialized courses change from year to year. In particular, notice that we have a lot of history and philosphy of science classes or other humanities courses that are related to science. It's not hard to find at least several courses a term that seem really cool to you. As for other technical fields, Caltech has a pretty large variety of course offerings in, say, subfields of geology or other things that you may have not tried out.

I'd recommend you pick between Stanford and Caltech based on fit. Generally, only a pretty specific type of person really "clicks" with the Caltech student culture, and so if you haven't felt that at all (hopefully you came to prefrosh weekend), you'll almost certainly be happier at Stanford.

UCLA, Ph.D.

If you mean by outgoing you want a college experience than go to Stanford, but if you want to be near L.A. or would like hanging out in Pasadena go to Cal Tech. That said, given your major I don't know how much hanging out you will do in L.A. You sound more like Stanford is your speed.