Though the fact that CalTech has under 1,000 undergraduates establishes the school as a pretty intimate place, the system of sorting students in residential houses creates even closer communities. According to one alum, “each 'house' at 'tech has a unique personality ( the hippie/druggie house, the sadistic house, the mostly [C]hristian house, the sporty house, etc.) that you will soon adopt as your own, whether you want to or not ( I was in the hippie/druggie). Once selected into one of these houses, a majority of the students will essentially confine themselves with this one group of people for the rest of their four years. So be careful about which house you choose to live in.” Most students express appreciation for the system, though they warn that it also encourages insularity. Students from different houses don’t always mix.
Most students work too hard to have much of a social life (and the much-bemoaned 70/30 gender split doesn’t help). Still, Techers are there for the academics. For the most part they are not disappointed. The alum continues, “The classes are hard, but they teach you a lot. So be prepared to work your ass off, but get a world-class education because of it. You'll get treated with a lot of respect when you graduate, too.” Professors have a great rep both on campus and off, which is a mixed blessing, since their prestige leads them to pursue research opportunities that can distract them from the classes they teach. As one sophomore chemistry major puts it, “It's not like they hate people (for the most part), it's just that they're less of a priority for them. [Students] don't learn quite as much from their professors as they do from figuring out the problem sets with each other. In some classes, most of the students taking that class won't even show up to lecture regularly.”
A strict honor code governs both social and academic life, and students swear by it. “The honor code ('any member of the Caltech community shall not take unfair advantage of another') is amazing. Take home quizzes and finals are common. You can take your finals in your room and time yourself. You get access to buildings. You can even buy lunch and pay for it the next day if you want. People trust you with almost anything. Don't break that trust,” the sophomore continues. Partly because of the code, the school has a pretty hands-off attitude towards the students. “At Caltech, you are treated by the administration as a child by his hippie parents, with lots of care, attention, and freedom to find your own path,” says an alum.
As much as students enjoy that freedom, they spend most of their four years pushing themselves hard, sometimes to the brink and sometimes beyond. “Caltech is a very intense and rigorous place. This translates to the education, and as a result many Caltech students work extremely hard and eventually burn out. Furthermore, many Caltech students are top students before they arrive, and therefore they might already be burned out,” says one junior chemistry major. A senior agrees: “People stay up very late doing work. It's usual to hear people saying they went to bed after 5 am. Sleeping is rare and very precious.”
Still, life does not entirely consist of problem sets. A freshman engineering major points out that “Caltech, despite our reputation, has many good athletic departments. Since we are a small school that focuses on academics first, the teams are typically less competitive. Because of this there is less athletic pride; however, it is pretty easy to start a sport - regardless of skill level.” This student continues, “Outside of classes, intellectual conversations are quite typical and enjoyable. I have talked to many people, and later found out he got a gold medal at an international physics competition, or she won a $100,000 scholarship for proving an original math theorem.” And though there is some inevitable competition among students, most Techers respect each other’s abilities. The school is a meritocracy in which everyone belongs: “there are many different people on campus, various races, various religions, from many countries and so on. But nobody cares! Everyone is treated the same and that's great. It matters how a person behaves and what they say, not their cultural background or race. However, because of this, the diversity can spread even easier and people find out things about other cultures without being biased against them,” says one senior.
This kind of grueling education isn’t for everyone, but the students at CalTech are generally happy: they enjoy better weather and a much more tight-knit campus than their closest competitor, MIT. And they know what they’re working towards: an esteemed position in the outside world, for which they will be amply prepared. As a senior sums up, “Employers and grad schools know that if they pick a Caltech graduate. They will get a very intelligent person, used to working very hard and never giving up.”
