<p>Here’s my attempt at rephrasing my previous post:</p>
<p>There is no one “right college”. For one particular student, even colleges with very similar focuses and academics can be very different due to the social scene (or other factors). A personal example of this for me was Stanford–I really liked the program they had for my major, I though the academic reputation was great, but I did not like the undergrad social scene. I personally feel that the difference between the MIT and the Caltech social scenes is actually pretty big.</p>
<p>Secondly, I think that without knowing someone it is hard to say what college they would fit in at the best and/or enjoy the most. A lot of people in this thread have attempted to tell this student that based on their opinions of the similarities between Caltech and MIT, it does not make sense for the student to transfer. I can imagine situations where it is appropriate for a student to make that particular transfer, because as I said, I view the social scenes as relatively different. Whether it is appropriate for the particular student in this thread to transfer or not is something that I think is very hard to determine, and I’d rather the student make up his or her own mind about it using good evidence than just going on the (what I would view as not fully-informed) suggestions presented in this thread.</p>