<p>“The only thing Caltech doesn’t have that other schools do have is people majoring in English and Communications and History and Philosophy.”</p>
<p>History major here!! Medieval at that.</p>
<p>And yes, I was a double-major. HOWEVER, I think it’s important to point out that the other medieval history major my year at Caltech (yes, amazingly, there were two of us) was a reformed biologist and only a History major. She ended up getting into UCLA’s medieval history PhD program, which is very solid (probably top 5) program in that field.</p>
<p>With a little more work on picking up language skills (especially Latin) and obviously less time spent on engineering, I like to think I could’ve had that outcome too.</p>
<p>Now, I lived next door to her as she (“we” is more accurate!) suffered through quantum mechanics sophomore year, but things did turn out all right for her, even as a history-only major, which I think was a decision she made in her junior year.</p>
<p>In fact her unique background had Harvard very interested in her for this research group they have that does DNA analysis of the parchment that historical documents are written on to determine where the animals came from… which to me sounded like a truly awesome opportunity–but she was adamant about doing “history only” and thus ended up at a program where she could do that.</p>