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rocketDA, you never do miss an opportunity to ■■■■■ do you? If only there were quality research opportunities on your own campus you could avoid he commute…</p>
<p>Anyway, to add something substantive to the discussion, for what it’s worth, sakky, I don’t believe that people generally fail out Caltech because they weren’t smart enough. Most of the people who fail out do so because of not working hard enough - for whatever, often understandable, reasons. In most majors, I’d strongly claim that anyone could get a 3.0 average should he or she be motivated to do so. In engineering, this might be a little lower (due to more classes, generally tougher grading schemes, etc.), but it’s still well above 2.0. This is a direct result of strong admission standards - which of course you support. </p>
<p>If you believe that (which you don’t, but hey, you’ve only seen the workload second hand right?), then it’s obvious that the 2.0 limit is just there to keep people working at a high level. And hence, you know that any Caltech degree implies not only aptitude (which is confirmed upon admission), but also work ethic. The latter, of course, is much harder to gauge during undergrad admissions, and that’s one of the reasons why colleges use grades in the first place.</p>