<p>I’m not sure where you got that impression, spratleyj, unless you’re basing that entire impression off of my post (which was just meant to be an example). Harvey Mudd professors primarily focus on teaching, whereas Caltech professors focus primarily on research (even sometimes to the detriment of teaching). There’s also the obvious distinction that Caltech has graduate students, whereas Harvey Mudd does not. For these reasons, your average Caltech professor is much more likely to be in the middle of cutting-edge research than your average HMC prof.</p>
<p>And by the way, probably 80-90% of students who are mainly interested in “theoretical physics and math” end up switching into something else–very few high schoolers actually understand what working in these fields entail. At Caltech, even those who make it past the first barrier (discovering what studying theoretical physics actually means) rarely make it past the second barrier (getting admitted to a theoretical physics grad school program). Let’s face it, you have to be really, really brilliant to be paid just to sit in a room and think.</p>