Placing out of classes at Caltech

arrhenius
Fri, 30 Jan 2015 22:12:27 +0000

I’m a current Caltech student. Placing out of introductory courses is determined by doing sufficiently well on Caltech placement exams. Testing out of math (usually Ma1a, sometimes also Ma 1b/1c, and more rarely Ma 2/3) and physics (Ph 1a; physics olympiad veterans usually get out of 1b/1c too) is standard. The CS 1 placement exam is also not too difficult, so a fair number place out of that as well. In very rare cases, some pass out of the freshman chemistry course as well, but it’s much much harder to do so than in math/physics/CS.

If your son is taking university-level math/physics already, chances are he will be able to pass out of the freshman math and physics courses providing that he takes the corresponding courses at his local university.