<p>I actually did notice that GracieLegend did not ever explicitly say what his/her gender was, but I felt that refering to his/her posts in the third person in the manner used in this sentence was sort of awkward. Besides, I’m pretty sure Gracie is a girl’s name. By the way, you still haven’t explicitly said what your gender is, so now I’m confused. :)</p>
<p>VonWeber makes some good points. I don’t think you can really know for certain whether a school will work for you until you try it. Of course, this stinks because if it turns out that it doesn’t work for you, then you might end up in a rather messy situation as I described earlier where you can’t transfer and a bunch of money basically gets lost down the drain. So you must do everything you can to make the right choice and then try to make the best of the situation once you begin next year. GracieLegend’s suggestions are good; see as many of the houses as you can, meet as many students as you can, and go to some lectures if you have time (I guess PFW is truncated or something this year because of budget, which is unfortunate). Try to imagine what it would be like living and working there every day. </p>
<p>I really don’t think I can pinpoint a specific ‘kind’ of person who would be happy at Caltech. Obviously, you need to like science and math more than pretty much everything else and you need to be able to handle the stress and heavy workload. You need to be able to work with others (or learn how quickly if you don’t do this already), unless you’re a supergenius or something. It seems like there are many students (or there were in my house anyway) who ‘burn out’ after a few years; I don’t know why this happens to some people and not to others. I think it may partially be a difference in how you handle the stress. I for one was rather bad at managing the stress, so I kind of just snapped one afternoon and decided I couldn’t take it anymore. </p>
<p>It’s strange, when I visited the campus and was learning about tech in '04/'05, I never really noticed the unhappy students for some reason. I don’t know if it’s because I was blind to the fact that Caltech isn’t perfect, or if it’s simply because they tend to ‘■■■■■’ and not express their opinions in settings such as this forum or PFW. They are certainly there. </p>
<p>My faculty adviser when I was at Caltech (a professor of physics and more recently biology) had a few words to say regarding the unhappy students in an e-mail regarding the transfer process that I would like to share:</p>
<p>“Over the years, I have talked with a number of advisees about transferring. It is a positive move for most, but in fact many stay, unhappily, who should have left…”</p>
<p>Those who remain unhappily would be the burn-outs I guess. Just remember if you do decide to go to Caltech, you’re not married to it and you can choose to leave if it doesn’t work out. You probably shouldn’t be as hasty as I was in drawing conclusions about the school though, because I don’t think my case was necessarily a typical one. </p>
<p>Incidentally, my adviser also made the following comment on the quality of teaching and the concern of professors for their undergrads at Caltech:</p>
<p>“I am a faculty member who cares about teaching, undergraduate students, and their Caltech environment. I have been here for over 40 years, doing that. But I am one among few…”</p>
<p>Interesting.</p>