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<p>As a Berkeley student, I agree with this. It is a huge atmosphere difference - a lot of people make it to Berkeley and are happy with that accomplishment, and don’t do much to exploit its resources. The resources at Berkeley are insanely terrific, but it’s up to the individual to take advantage of them. I think more is expected of the typical Caltech student, but there are of course the crazy insane people at Cal who you know are getting into MIT for grad school in hot fields like EECS from the start.</p>
<p>Premed is certainly not pleasant at Cal, from what I hear. It is very ultra-competitive, and you get placed in giant intro courses. I would wager Caltech is probably a notch harder on grading, but Cal’s premed grading is quite utterly brutal; lots of people already know the material, and the professor ensures that there’s quite a distribution of scores by writing an appropriate exam. A huge negative to Cal for premed is that giant lecture classes mean that one thing you could boost yourself with outside of acing classes, namely letters of recommendation, can be jeopardized. Even the upper level biology courses can be large, I think. Caltech might make up in a small way for crushing your GPA by giving you the chance to do quality research and put good padding on your application. I am, however, unaware whether or not this is useful, given med school applications are quite GPA-centric, it seems.</p>
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<p>I am going to say the same thought crossed my mind, but I have a point of skepticism. Caltech, as you said, requires classes that really are not required for biology majors, such as QM, etc. Are these all Pass/Fail, or is there a way you can take them as such? Even so, the GPA for med school that is taken most seriously may be in the standard premed requirements. Which could nullify the benefit of Caltech giving a Pass-or-Fail record. (Is it not true that sometimes medical schools will have to ask schools to release the records, if they are to consider the candidate?). Overall, it seems the standard at Caltech is to take 5 classes every quarter; correct me if I’m wrong. It seems like a fairly good student who wants to maximize his/her GPA would be jeopardized by having considerably more pressured a schedule (as opposed to at Cal, where you can be very careful about taking only as many classes as you really can manage, and putting all efforts into doing well at the premed requirements).</p>
<p>The OP mentions being worried about handling the science/math classes. This has me wonder if he/she is going to be one of those I mentioned, who struggles with those enough to hurt the rest of the coursework. After all, premed requirements are introductory courses, which are likely taken alongside the core curriculum.</p>
<p>Sure, Pass-or-Fail is good, but at Cal for instance, you can just avoid the course altogether, and it does probably take a significant enough drain to pass a class at Caltech in QM, even if the pass rate is very high <em>after</em> one puts in the effort.</p>
<p>Bottom line is, I think you should go to Caltech if you want what it offers, and what it offers is by far not the friendliest med-school track. It is a school for people who love math/science and stuff like that, and a school that is very successful getting a lot of people into PhD programs (although, it can also be hard on you to be alongside such a strong class - you have to be sure to stand out with your research interests).</p>