<p>could you elaborate a little more on question 54
54)a)Are there certain majors at caltech that are looked at with much more respect than others(by prospective employers or grad schools) or are all majors considered to be the best in the country(wrt engineering and science)?</p>
<p>b)How much of a quality difference is there between engineering and sciences at caltech-major difference or minor?</p>
<p>56)Double major might be a tad bit difficult to handle…what is the best in economics that i can do without having to doble major?</p>
<p>57)How hard is it to double major in EE + eco/Maths + eco?</p>
<p>58)Do 1st and 2nd term grades count at all towards the gpa(considering they are only pass/fail with shadow grades given for the 2nd term)?</p>
<p>Also, more opinions on 52,53,54 and 55 are welcome…
thanks…</p>
<p>Double majoring EE + anything else is usually quite difficult, mostly in terms of the time it takes. I do know an individual doing it, and doing it well, but I wouldn’t call it easy.</p>
<p>57) Math/econ is definitely a lot more doable since math is one of the more requirement-light majors. Of course, if you have a strong math background, passing out of Ma 1 would really make doing this much much easier. You’re also probably going to want to manipulate your core HSS classes so maximize the amount of multiple requirements you satisfy - take only four as humanities classes, two as non-econ social science classes (one introductory and one advanced,) and the other six as econ or BEM.</p>
<p>I should preface this question by saying Caltech sounds like a great place to me, and I’m enrolled for 2011, but what’s up with yield? For that matter, what exactly was the yield this year? Do other students know something I don’t, or are they just drawn to other places (MIT, Harvard) for the greater name recognition?</p>
<p>I think there are several possible reasons for the difference in yield between Caltech and its peer institutions. While Caltech has many traits that some people think are fantastic, others may disagree. Specifically, while there are people that love the small campus, quirky atmosphere, and academic rigor, there are probably people who feel that these exact traits are negatives. It’s also not really “safe” for students who are unwilling to put forth a significant amount of effort towards learning math and science. This being the case, it certainly does not have as broad appeal as larger universities. Perhaps a lot of students apply before they research the specifics of the different schools? Name recognition may also be a factor (maybe even a large one; hell if I know), but the truth is that Caltech is actually different from other comparable institutions in very real ways. </p>
<p>While it’s likely that other students know something you don’t, it is probably not the case that what they know is relevant to your situation. example:
Suppose I didn’t like science, but rather was interested in accounting. I know school X has a comparative advantage in that area, and enroll there. How does this affect you? It doesn’t.</p>
<p>So, here’s my opinion. I think the primary reason is prestige–Caltech is very well-known in science and engineering but outside of those fields it doesn’t have the name recognition of MIT or Harvard. I think many students do not take the time to research Caltech after getting into one of these “more prestigious” schools, and so don’t have a great idea of what Caltech is like. I volunteered in the admissions office to call admitted students, and you’d be surprised how little most of them knew about Caltech–many I talked to knew nothing about the house system, the honor code, or the core curriculum. </p>
<p>Of the students who make it through that cut, there are a variety of reasons not to attend Caltech. Too small, not enough humanities majors, not enough girls, ‘weird’ social environment, really hard, etc.</p>
<p>I’d really like to see our yield improve, but part of me is glad that it is low. Why? Caltech is NOT for everyone. If you’re going to college for the prestige, for the jobs you’ll get after, to have a good time… Caltech is NOT the right place. Of course, you’ll get these things at Caltech, but you can get them at other places with much less work / misery. </p>
<p>So then why come to Caltech at all? For a certain kind of student–the student who is truly passionate about math/science/engineering and doesn’t just do it because he/she is good at it–the student who wants to realize his/her limits–the student who wants to be surrounded by people who share his/her motivation and talent–Caltech is perfect. In terms of our environment, there really is no other place like Caltech. (I’ll probably elaborate more on this later).</p>
<p>Sometimes I think Caltech emphasizes the hardwork over the comraderie, and scares prospective students/parents from enrolling. Any top school is hARD, especially math/ eng/physics/ etc majors.</p>
<p>reminds us that a college can boost yield by practicing “strategic admission,” that is by admitting students who were not admitted by any more appealing colleges. It’s hard to say when independent researchers will next have access to enough data to detect this pattern in the practice of a college admission office.</p>
<p>If this doesn’t work, go to post #1673 in the thread</p>
<p>Interesting article - I must be being dense, but how was Caltech ranked higher than MIT, if they say Caltech ranking was primarily based on comparing MIT to other schools, (due to a lack of cross-admits with Caltech and other top schools except MIT because of self-selection). I thought MIT won most cross-admit battles with Caltech.
It also struck me that the authors were wrong that Caltech was ranked too high because of self-selection. It may be true that the typical top student would pick lower ranked schools over Caltech more often, but that doesn’t seem especially relevant, because the only people who are going to care where Caltech is in the table are people who have been admitted to Caltech, who are also part of the self-selected group who favor Caltech. So, while the pool of people that created Caltech’s high ranking may be self-selected, and different from the typical top high school student, they are representative of the people who care, so it seems legitimate to me. Have I shown myself to be an utter moron unworthy of my acceptance letter?</p>
They don’t seem to provide the actual numbers they got for Caltech vs. MIT head-to-head, but Table 3 shows that Caltech has a 56% chance of winning against Yale, which has a 59% chance of winning against MIT. Table 4 shows that in 81% of draws between MIT and Caltech, Caltech is ranked higher than MIT. This seems to contradict all of the numbers I’ve ever seen which show that MIT wins over Caltech in cross admit battles, and the paper seems to indicate that it likely determined the Caltech/Yale number based off of the MIT/Yale number. Your confusion is certainly understandable (I’m confused myself.)</p>
<p>The point of the paper is to demonstrating how to construct a revealed preference ranking of universities (i.e. the main point is the econometric theory). The analysis in the paper is merely a demonstration on a small data set. Due to random chance they picked up a sample in which Caltech was winning over MIT. In reality, MIT wins over Caltech in cross-admit battles.</p>
<p>Oh, right - that makes sense. It would be interesting to see it done with a larger sample. Could the dip in SAT scores at Princeton possibly be due to the gap between what it takes for a URM to get in, vs what they generally admit for non URM students? The dip could be where there were fewer URM students with that high of scores, but they still weren’t accepting large numbers of non-URM students. Or am I over-estimating the differences both in SATs and admittance rates for URM students? I don’t really have a concept of what the difference is, but if it were large enough, I would expect a distribution like that with a hump where the product of admittance rate and score frequency for the minority students was maximized.</p>
<p>Question:
59) I am a newly admitted transfer student (ChemE option). Through this forum, I heard many people said ChemE is one of the hardest (seriously, I was scared) because of the number of units they have to complete for graduation. But when I searched Caltech website and 06-07 Catalog for “Typical Course Schedule” in each options, I found that many other options, such as math, physics, and biology require greater amount of units than ChemE.</p>
<p>The question is: Could you Techers please explain to this newbie why people STILL regard ChemE is one of the hardest option at Caltech because of the number of units they have to take??, even tough it turns out that other options I mentioned above require roughly same amount of units.</p>