Choosing Caltech over MIT and Stanford...

tech_fan
Thu, 22 Mar 2007 17:01:45 +0000

Size: you could get to personally know close to half of your class (and recognize everyone in the school by sight) whereas at Stanford or MIT it’s more like a city – you see lots of people who share something vague in common but most of whom you personally are pretty unconnected with. This is totally a personality thing. Some people love the anonymity of a bigger place, and other people really love feeling like part of a small community. Still, with close to 1000 undergraduates, pretty much every kind of personality (subject to being at a top math/science school) is represented and so you won’t be lacking for fun and new people to meet.

Trust and honor code: Non-academic interactions are governed by the honor code like everything else at Caltech. There is a huge amount of trust – you will see people’s doors open even when they’re not around and the understanding is that people are looking out for each other. People can get lunch and if the cashier is not there, you are trusted to pay for it later when she is. These seem like trivial things but they actually add up a LOT to making you feel relaxed.

Houses: see the house thread. Other schools don’t have anything quite like this.

Incredibly supportive staff: while some Techers feel the administration has sometimes been uncaring, overall my experiences with the “bureaucrats” have been amazing. They have so few students to deal with that they can be genuinely kind to many for no good reason at all. The new dining director is superb – he organizes events like free breakfast at midnight during finals week, for free. Generally people will go out of their way to make students comfortable. I think the bigger and more impersonal places don’t quite have this.

Those are a few of the things I’ve enjoyed. Others chime in please.