<p>I’m a physics junior at Caltech, so I’ll give you my perspective.</p>
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Caltech is tough to get through, but the vast majority of the people who are admitted can graduate with enough effort. I have only seen a small handful of people who I thought were not actually capable of making it through. These instances were related to sophomore core math and physics classes.</p>
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I think you’re not exactly interpreting the ‘low’ freshamn retention rate properly. It’s not that these people are failing out, but rather, they’re transferring to other, often excellent, schools. The main reason for this, as I’ve seen, is a realization that a person does not want to major in a science related field. The great thing about pass/fail is that, even if a person doesn’t do well in the first two terms, they can still rely on their great high-school record to transfer to a different school before they get bad college grades.</p>
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A 3.5 is highly non-trivial for a pre-med. All students must take on grades: 1 term of E&M + special relativity, 1 term of thermo/stat mech/optics, 1 term of quantum mechanics, 1 term of multivariable calculus, 1 term of statistics, and 1 term of differential equations. These grades tend to be pretty low for people who are interested in medical school, for obvious reasons. </p>
<p>In general, I’m willing to say that most anyone who is accepted to Caltech is able to get a 3.0 GPA with hard work. To get higher though, one needs quite a bit of aptitude / previous preparation. A 3.5 is by no means guarenteed and may very well be impossible for a decent number of people accepted. I know several incredibly capable, dilligent pre-meds who would love to have a 3.5.</p>
<p>That being said, the screening for this program seems pretty rigorous and people who can be accepted to that may have a much better chance of actually getting a 3.5 than the average accepted applicant.</p>