California Institute of Technology in the Heart of Pasadena, CA
Written: Sep 22 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: bright minds; resources and facilities; comprehensive curriculum; challenge; research opportunities
Cons: school is your life; good lecturers can be tough to find; social life missing
The Bottom Line: If you truly love science and/or engineering (more than social life) and want to get a fundamentally scientific education from world's brightest minds, there is only one. Caltech.
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| deniscit's Full Review: California Institute of Technology |
I pondered for a while how to make my 50th review on Epinions extra-special and ultimately decided to write about my undergraduate Alma Mater: The California Institute of Technology, also known as Caltech. Not CalTech or Cal Tech, as some carelessly spell its abbreviation, but Caltech.
What is Caltech?
Caltech is perhaps best known the world over for its physics and astronomy departments, boasting access to some of the best experimental hardware in the world. Caltech also often makes the news in the world of space exploration, as the operator of and the thinktank behind the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Whenever there's an earthquake in Southern California (fairly often!), Caltech scientists are ready with a press release about the statistics and the analysis of the quake.
Caltech employs some of the sharpest minds in just about every department and has done so traditionally. There was a time when Richard Feynman taught freshman physics, Linus Pauling taught freshman chemistry, and Tom Apostol taught freshman mathematics. Anyone who is familiar with the world of science know such names as Feynman and Pauling. Tom Apostol's rigorous course on the fundamentals of calculus in its hard-cover print has been employed as an invaluable teaching tool at some of the best schools in the nation. Some of the distinguished visitors to Caltech over the years have included Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, who still often visits with his friends and colleagues in the physics department.
Caltech is a remarkably small school for the remarkably big minds that pass through it, and it both prides and thrives on this fact. The overall student body totals to around 2,000 - split nearly equally between undergraduate and graduate. You do the math - roughly 200 to 250 students in each undergraduate class year. The majors are generally geared toward the highly technical fields of science and engineering, but humanities, social studies, and literature majors are also offered.
Getting into Caltech
When I was in the process of choosing a pool of undergraduate institutions for my application process, I was already convinced that I wanted to pursue a career in chemical engineering. One thing that struck a chord with me immediately about Caltech was the premise of its intimate academic environment, where each student is a person rather than a number, where even if your answer may be wrong you will be credited for your analysis, and where the focus is on the fundamentals. From the booklets, I was happy with the look of the place, with the feel of its spirit, with the small student body, with the lack of fraternities, with the most serious focus on academics above all else.
While it's often said that you need to be a genius to succeed at Caltech from matriculation to graduation, I certainly disagree with that perspective and am the evidence to the contrary. I am no genius, my SAT scores were not in the vicinity of the perfect 1600, and I graduated from an average underfunded American public high school in the blue-collar midwestern community. What I always had was the natural love of and aptitude for science and mathematics, and the rest I had to build on that ground by working, basically, through the nose. Caltech does, of course, gladly accept geniuses, but if you are just a hard-worker with some native ability and can convince Caltech admissions that you will do whatever it takes to make the most out of your Caltech experience, they will give you a shot, too.
Once you're in, you're IN
One interesting thing about Caltech is that once you win the competition with 10-15 other students for your place on the Caltech admissions roster, the institute's academic environment from there on out is not one of fierce competition. Quite on the contrary, Caltech encourages its students to cultivate an environment of friendly competition and extensive collaboration, and that is what I found to be true of Caltech throughout my experience. Just about every student is bright in his or her own right, which they'd proven by becoming your Caltech classmate. Since Caltech's academic program is designed to challenge you to the extent of your ability, the institute realizes that collaboration is an essential part of learning, where students get to help each other and learn from one another, being able to combine their minds together, brainstorm, and come up with new ways to figure a problem out.
Caltech's academic curriculum is the reason for encouraging students to help each other in their learning process. Every student who enters Caltech, regardless of their major, must take and pass mathematics (from probability theory and one-variable calculus to linear algebra to multi-variable calculus to statistics to ordinary differential equations), chemistry (from electrons to atoms to molecules to inorganic chemical reactions to chemical thermodynamics to some organic chemistry), and physics (from Newtonian mechanics to electricity and magnetism to optics to thermodynamics to statistical physics to quantum physics). That's right, even if you came to Caltech to major in literature, you still have to at least pass multi-variable calculus and quantum physics. Granted, these introductory core courses mostly just survey the most essential topics in the aforementioned subjects, but they are in-depth enough to provide students with thoroughly challenging assignments.
Academic Instruction
Professors design the curriculum for their courses, lecture, make up tests, and grade tests at the very least. In no lecture-based class has a professor's lecture been substituted by that of a graduate student or an assistant. Professors usually make up homework assignments, but generally the grading falls on graduate-student teaching assistants, unless the class is very small or the professor simply wishes to grade the homeworks to see firsthand how the students are doing. Lectures vary in quality from excellent and accessible to very boring and incomprehensible. Sadly, there's more of the latter than the former - by far not all bright minds have the gift or the desire to teach. However, you can generally get plenty of help, if you are organized enough to read over and think about your assignments well in advance of their deadline. The professors generally have weekly office hours but can be sometimes caught outside of those hours. How useful are professors' office hours? Depends on a professor. Some are useless. Others are quite helpful. Generally, the grad student(s) assisting with the course should become your good friends because their help may save you *days* of suffering.
Courses begin from large in the first year and trickle down to very small in your advanced years. For instance, in the Fall trimester of the freshman year, there is one freshman math class, one freshman physics class, and one freshman chemistry class for *everyone*, and I mean you will see your whole class in that one lecture hall (well, except the small minority of students whose pre-Caltech background was advanced enough to place them out of these freshman classes and onto the next stage.) Starting with the Winter trimester of the freshman year, the freshman math and physics split into what's called a "Practical Track" and an "Analytical Track" - sounds self-explanatory? Indeed, the practical track focuses more on the problem-solving techniques, while the analytical track focuses on the fundamentally theoretical underpinnings of the presented subject matter. I chose the analytical track in math, and the practical track in physics. Thinking about it now, I should have done the exact opposite because the analytical framework of the electromagnetic theory in physics has a close analog in the theory of transport phenomena in my own field of chemical engineering and would have made it easier for me to learn. However, my academic advisor (who was a chemical engineering professor, actually!) failed to advise me wisely on this matter, and I really had no good way of figuring that out by myself in the beginning of my freshman year.
To handle instruction of large classes efficiently, the students are divided into groups/sections, each section having no more than 15-20 students. The sections meet weekly as a class with the teaching assistant (TA) assigned to that section. At that point, the TA generally reviews the key points in this week's lectures or the key points the students need to understand for their homework and also try to work out some examples on the board, taking questions from students. These examples are often picked to be in some way useful for the homework. The homework generally takes a while even with this help, often being nearly impossible without the hints.
The classes are rated in "units," with 9 units being the standard rating for the class. These units are what the registrar determines as "hours per week" a student spends on the class. They are generally broken down on the course listing into "lecture-lab-homework" figure, such as 3-0-6, which means 3 hours a week for lectures, 0 hours a week for lab (course has no laboratory part), and 6 hours a week for homework. While the lecture hour figure is correct, students often spend a lot more than the rated amount of hours on the lab and homework aspects of the course. In fact, one course that I was taking in chemical engineering took up about 12-15 hours a week on homework. Typical student courseload was 40-something units per trimester, with over 50 units being considered a heavy load.
Caltech homeworks are legendary for their intellectual difficulty and time commitment required to complete them, putting the coursework at many other schools to shame. Professors generally make up the homeworks so that you couldn't look up a solution or a part of a solution elsewhere, like a book or lecture notes. The homework truly tests your ability to understand and apply the concepts learned in the class, rather than regurgitate the lecture/book material. Some professors were more reasonable than others, and as a result, some homeworks could be done with considerable thought but without seeking the help from peers or TAs, and some homeworks would be simply impossible without such help. Each class comes with its own rules about collaborating and seeking help.
Tests at Caltech are not merely devices to gauge how much knowledge from a given course a student can hold in his/her head. Instead, Caltech professors often design tests as devices for further instruction, where you could be asked to take a series of steps in guided analysis to arrive at a solution to a problem that could teach you something new. Yes, some courses at Caltech do employ the old-fashioned testing techniques, where you really need to memorize a lot of things, but some courses in their tests may guide you through a process of deriving some fundamental formula, using the techniques that you were expected learn throughout the course.
Generally, Caltech is not for the weak, and it is not for the faint of heart. The professors and the TAs aren't there to hold your hand or convince you to work. You are expected to have your own motivation and complete your work in accordance to your own schedule. Some students go to every lecture and do every homework. Some students don't go to any lecture and are still able to excel on their homeworks and tests. Some classes give you an option to forego the homeworks altogether and just transfer all of your grade percentage to the tests: it worked for some students, while proving to be a disaster for others. Caltech gives the students their independence in which they are expected to endure the atmosphere of intense learning. If anything, Caltech will make you think very hard and challenge you to the maximum of your ability while you learn the curriculum for your chosen major(s).
Honor Code
Caltech puts immense trust into its students and faculty. All members of Caltech community are bound by the Honor Code, where you are expected to follow the rules honestly, without the need for an enforcer. For example, if a professor tells the students that he does not want them to collaborate on the homeworks at all, the students are trusted to do the homework by themselves, only asking the TA or the professor for help. Most of Caltech tests are unsupervised take-home arrangements, with certain rules stated on the coverpage of the test. The coverpage will state the time limit for the test, if such exists, and which sources the student can consult, if any. Some professors will give take-home tests with a 3-hour limit, while others will tell you to turn in the test in a week and work on it as much as you please. Some professors will allow you to use the course text and/or lecture notes for the exam, and some professors will state a closed-everything policy, except of course your open mind.
Does the Honor Code work? Yes, it does, and I must say that it's one of the things that makes Caltech such a special place. You are trusted like an adult to be an honorable member of the community, even if it means you failing or not having enough time to finish your test. If you violate the Honor Code, you are expected to turn yourself in and accept your disciplinary action. Were there some violators of the Honor Code? Yes, but only the very few. The people I knew well at Caltech were all honest and trustworthy individuals. Perhaps the most severe case of the honor code violation received a one-year suspension from campus but was not expelled and in the end returned to successfully complete his program. In general, since the violations were so far and in between, and that's to say very very few, the Honor Code continued its existence over many years.
That being said, some professors are more trusting, and some are less trusting. The professors in the math and sciences generally set a time limit but handed you a test for a few days, so you could pick a day most convenient for you. The professors in engineering also gave unproctored take-home exams, but often they would only hand you the test for the amount of time that the test requires and maybe some 30 mins on top of that to let you walk to your favorite test-taking venue, whether it be your room or the library.
Student Life
Caltech's student life is rather spartan and geared, most of all, toward the rigorous intellectual work. Fraternities and sororities do not exist on campus and neither do the famous frat parties. Instead, the undergraduate housing is broken down into several student houses. The houses are like their own micro-communities. During the first week of classes, the freshman students go through a dining rotation in each of the houses, getting to know the house members during dinners and letting the house members get to know you. After the rotation week is over, you rank your house preferences on a card and turn it in. The houses then go through their own process of choosing the students they feel fit best to their house. Once the decisions are made, there's a little ritual that every freshman goes through to find out which house picked them: they go to stand in line in various houses, go through a few embarrassing rituals, and eventually find out which house chose them. The house that chose to "admit" you will, of course, have a certain admission ritual, where they will take you in some dark room and maybe poor water on you or try some other initiation feat like that - it all varies house by house and by year.
Different houses have different feel to them, different types of people living there, different decor, etc. Some houses are the quieter, more civil ones. Others retain the majority of Asian population on campus. Some houses are more athletic. Others are famous for pulling more pranks.
In general, the student life isn't anything to write home about. Sure, there seemed to be plenty of booze on campus. Sure, there was some quiet drug use that I knew about because one of my best friends there was in that circle. Otherwise, there weren't really any interesting social events or any well-organized parties on the undergraduate level. Mostly, you have people who are up to their eyeballs in work for most of the academic year trying to get their stuff done. The social skills of most students seemed questionable, but so were mine at that point, so who am I to judge. Women made for about 30% of undergraduate population, and most of these women were outside the scope of my interests. Many women were rather tom-boyish and often had the equally obscure boyfriends. Asian students probably constituted the majority of student population, while black students were the precious few - count them on your fingers. Not a whole lot of diversity.
Caltech isn't famous for sports, and most people play for fun or recreation rather than competition. Some games with nearby colleges generally happened on a consistent basis, but Caltech generally wasn't too concerned with winning. That did not bother me that much because the purpose of the school was clear, and I, like most other students, came there for the world-renowned academics and research opportunities, rather for the football team of the frat parties.
Academic Research
What do you do when you have spare time as an undergraduate at Caltech? That was a trick question - you have no spare time at Caltech. You make spare time by pushing your inexistent sleep schedule farther into obscurity and cutting down on the zero social life you may have amassed up to this point. Anyhow, in the "spare time," you look for opportunities for academic research, for there are many!
Caltech professors generally have a lot of money at their disposal and, except for the select few, they are not afraid to use it! Every professor on campus is active in some sort of research frontier, and all you need to do is choose. Some research groups have 2-4 graduate students, while some groups run larger outfits, with personnel count over 20. The larger groups are not that many, but they generally exist in biology, chemistry, biochemistry, biotechnology, and the like. Depending on the ambitiousness of the project, how much help there is in the group, and the level of skill required to operate the equipment, and the level of theoretical understanding involved, chances are you will find a research group that will take you under their tutelage and let you begin your experience with academic research.
If there aren't any attractive opportunities during the academic year or if there's simply no time, be not afraid, as Caltech offers a special on-campus summer research program, called SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship). Generally, you need to approach a professor about an opportunity, and depending on your background, you are sure to find someone willing to take you on. You need to write a brief project proposal and submit it to the SURF committee, who will then decide who to award the fellowship (your stipend for the summer work, which used to be about $4000, minus the taxes). Admission to this program was not difficult, but checks and balances were there to make sure that only the high-quality, thought-out projects are funded - like with everything in high-level academics.
Caltech has all kinds of resources to make research productive. Of all the things you have to worry about, productivity tools are one thing where Caltech really takes your worries away. Campus has all kinds of specialized labs and centers, ranging from physics to biotechnology to computing.
Several large computer labs have been available to all students on-campus, no matter which department you were from. Computers ranged from Windows to Linux-based or Sun-based workstations.
Two main libraries on campus are titans in their field, allowing you to get whatever materials you need as quickly as possible. The libraries feature extensive online journal subscriptions, and if the library doesn't subscribe to a certain technical journal that you need, put in a request through the system, and the library will deliver the copy of the article you needed to your campus mailbox of your email within a day or two. Sometimes sooner. I could never be happier with the Caltech Library System.
In science and engineering, one often needs to custom-make certain designs for academic research, whether that be out of glass, metal, wood, plastic, plexiglass, or what have you. To that end, Caltech has truly amazing resources. You could buy whatever materials or parts you needed at the main receiving dock for the institute - the same place that institute maintenance and facilities do their shopping to get their repair materials - you can imagine the repository is rather large. (Whatever the receiving dock did not have, McMaster-Carr would deliver to the school by next day).
Once you bought your materials, you could take them to one of the machine shops and have them constructed in accordance to your design. Caltech has several machine shops, but over my time there, I became most familiar with the machine shop in the Chemistry Department. There is a student shop if you have skill, or you could ask the machinists to do the job for you. Other times, the machinists will allow the more skilled frequent visitors to utilize their own equipment (in the main shop rather than the student shop) and just answer questions or supervise briefly - without a fee for labor. The Chemistry Department also has an incredible glass blower that could make just about whatever custom glassware your research may need.
The university's central location in Pasadena, CA, made deliveries from outside vendors quite expeditious also, especially given the fact that a great amount of supply companies are housed right there in Southern California.
Work Environment and Safety
Caltech's sits among the numerous palm trees in the sunny, warm Pasadena, California. It never snowed in Pasadena except once, and the lowest temperatures are perhaps the high 40s, but they don't stay there long. In Pasadena, it is not uncommon to witness an 80-degree day right in the middle of the "winter season," so to say. The summers can get up into 100s, but because the air is generally rather dry, you can still breathe (unlike New Jersey, where one has to gasp for air during the high 90s). The winter season is often accompanied by high winds.
The campus is incredibly picturesque. Perfectly landscaped any time of year, taking a stroll through Caltech campus is a good way to take in some eye candy and relax the mind. The buildings are in general very pretty to look at, many of them done up in smooth, ivory cream-colored arcade style that is a California design signature. The campus is very pleasant to be around and look at, and often times people come from all sorts of places to photograph their weddings at Caltech and hold large parties at the distinguished faculty club, called The Athaneum, where the amazing cuisine will pamper your taste buds.
The Athaneum, however, is not accessible to the undergraduates, unless they are accompanied by a professor who is a member. I have had the pleasure to visit The Athaneum several times, and every time was a luxury in its own right. Once, I had the pleasure of attending a large event at the Athaneum sponsored by the SURF (Summer Research) and eat dinner there with some of the money donors to the program - it was fantastic.
Speaking of food, there is plenty of it on campus. If you are living in one of the houses, you have some good food choices there. Just be careful of putting too much on your plate - many a Caltech student fattened up considerably during their time at Caltech because of this food. If you do not live at one of the houses, you can buy something at the campus cafeteria, which has a wide variety of high-quality choices and good prices. Alternatively, the convenience store serves some cold snacks and drinks, while a cafe next to the campus bookstore serves fresh (loose-leaf) tea, coffee, fresh pastry, etc etc. If you don't feel like campus food, Pasadena offer the whole plethora of food choices just a 10-minute walk away, also at reasonable prices. One way of another, you'll have plenty of fuel for your brain.
Safety on Caltech campus was never a concern. The campus has a rather large network of very bright lights installed along just about every possible walkway. You can see a student walking the campus at any time of night, really. I felt comfortable walking on campus by myself even at 3 or 4 am and so did most of my fellow students, including women. If you didn't feel like walking by yourself, call campus security, and they are always happy to walk with you if you don't feel comfortable walking alone. Any security incidents (just a handful for the whole year) on campus generally involved minor off-campus incidents on the north side of campus, where a student walked alone very late at night.
Overall Experience
My undergraduate education at Caltech was perhaps the most intense and challenging time in my academic career so far. Yet, I never regret for one second having made the choice to work as hard as I did at Caltech during my undergraduate experience. I felt like I was a part of something special, something unique, something very mature. I will remain forever thankful to Caltech for seeing the potential in me, for putting the trust in me, for letting me work and study alongside some of the brightest minds in the world, and for teaching me the great many things not only about the academic subjects but also about myself.
It is true that Caltech does have some shortcomings, like any school does. However, despite the hard times and academic frustrations, I managed to emerge victoriously and not without the help of the graduate students, professors, and even the Caltech administration. I give Caltech 5 stars for giving me that unique experience that I still treasure and look back upon with fond memories, for challenging me to the extent of my abilities, and for teaching me to think about problems large and small.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
deniscit
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Member: Denis
Location: Mercer County, NJ, USA
Reviews written: 70
Trusted by: 46 members
About Me:
Being a little different can be a lot of fun!
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