<p>Caltech is not recommended for people whose main goal upon entering is law or medicine because those admissions processes are very GPA sensitive and don’t adjust much for the difficulty of the institution you come from. The thing people worry about is someone whose dream is to be an MD who goes to Caltech, gets a 3.0, and doesn’t get into a good med school.</p>
<p>With that said, about 10 graduating seniors a year (give or take a few) go to medical+law school. Often these are in the top quarter of their class and they end up doing extremely well. </p>
<p>Generally people can do almost anything they want after Caltech. I decided late in my education that I wanted to be an economist and there was nothing stopping me. People go into financial consulting, management consulting, basically management in any industry you can think of, research careers in industry, also public service, media (journalism and publishing), and the list goes on. My educated guess is that at least 40% of Caltech graduates end up earning money doing something other than scientific research, and I know for sure that many of them are very happy and wealthy doing this.</p>
<p>It’s not like other school leave open doors that you couldn’t go into as a Caltech graduate. That’s the one mistake people seem to make most often. The only thing Caltech doesn’t have that other schools do have is people majoring in English and Communications and History and Philosophy. Those majors are entirely useless from the point of view of specific job training. Their only excuse for existing is that they “teach you how to think and argue complicated cases effectively,” and I promise that a Caltech math major + philosophy minor will teach you much more about thinking and arguing than almost any other activity that exists.</p>
<p>So, the short story, if you come here and do well (and you can do well if you work hard), many, many doors will be open. So just come! :)</p>