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I wound up at Caltech by pure luck, finding an institute particularly well suited to my personality and what I needed. For one example, Caltech has an honor system where the default is for the professors and students to be collaborators and trust each other rather than be adversaries.
Thanks, Caltech!
Similar anecdote: I deeply believe that Caltech is the best[0] university for me (and that's even while I'm struggling with major burnout due to an insanely rough sophomore year[1]—even though my current situation is decidedly suboptimal, I don't regret a thing).
My particular favorite aspects of Caltech are three-fold (in no specific order):
1) The Honor Code and collaborative nature, for the reasons you've mentioned :-)
2) The breadth of the Core and CS major requirements. e.g. I really doubt that I would have found a fascination for physics, without Caltech having required me to take two terms of special relativity and electrodynamics as a freshman.
3) The theoretical focus. Even though I'm a CS major, my classes are often proof-based. One (non-CS-specific) example was Ma 1a, the mandatory first-quarter freshman calculus class: It spent the first two weeks building up the real numbers (i.e. starting from the Peano axioms). Caltech's theoretical-ness has a particularly special place in my heart, because it's one of the big reasons I recently cared to learn about interactive theorem proving and formal verification (which I love so much that I'm working on a undergraduate research project in Coq).
[0] (among the universities that I know enough about)
[1] I'm honestly a bit hesitant to share about my burnout publicly (since mental health issues can have stigmas and I don't want to shoot myself in the foot re: grad schools or employers), but HN is sufficiently anonymous (at a casual glance) that this feels safe enough.
I did not go to Caltech. But my advisor did, and he is a mathematician who attended Feynman's lectures on computation. (Again the breadth : a math Ph.D taking a course in theory of computation from a Physicist.)
Feynman's requirement for an A grade in the course was "prove something original". Someone timidly asked, "Well, what if we can't?" He replied: "Then I feel sorry for you." I wish my history were slightly different.
But you must be more discreet, I think. It's not wise to give intimate medical information to strangers who might not be medical experts. All the best for your future.
> hesitant to share about my burnout publicly
Wish this weren’t the case! The more open and okay we are with it the less perceived stigma there will be. We should consider it as typical and normal as physical conditions like asthma or diabetes that many of us have experienced or live with today.
> sufficiently anonymous
your name is in your profile
> For one example, Caltech has an honor system where the default is for the professors and students to be collaborators and trust each other rather than be adversaries.
What does this mean in practice? Students and staff collaborate in every institution I've ever been part of.
I didn’t go to caltech, but at Harvey Mudd we had a similar vibe. I once had a take home exam that stipulated I had to take a 5 minute break half way through the test. During the break I was not allowed to think about the exam problems. That was probably the most difficult rule I was ever asked to follow during a take-home. I tried to follow it as best I was able.
On one take home math exam I decided to TeX up my answers. This was permitted as long as you stayed within the time limits, but I forgot the command for a specific symbol. I wouldn’t be able to print my exam until after my time had elapsed, and so I wouldn’t even be able to draw the symbol on the printed exam without violating the letter of the law. Naturally using the internet to look up the command would also be a violation of the rules. I chose to just include an apology in my proof that explained the situation and then introduced a replacement symbol that I used instead.
I got the impression that most students were similarly strict about adhering to take home exam rules.
An adversarial system is where, for example, exams are proctored because the students are not trusted. It's where students actually brag about cheating to their peers.
At Caltech, I never heard anyone brag about cheating. I know of one student who willingly took an F because he accidentally went over the time limit for the take-home exam, and reported it. Nobody would have known otherwise if he hadn't reported it.
Exams are generally take home.
Students are expected to follow the exam instructions on the honor system.
It's a refreshing change of pace to take exams when and where it's convenient.
Maybe professors leave the room during exams. I think a number of universities do this. Outright "adversaries" sounds insane and toxic though. I don't know how an undergrad institution could even function if students and professors were actively trying to undermine each other.
I wound up at Caltech by pure luck too. Walked there from PCC, which I went to for 2 years (I didn't attend Caltech).
Would you qualify Caltech as a competitive environment?
Not really. Institute policy disallowed curve grading. I also found the better students to be generous in helping me understand the stuff. Without them I would have flunked out.
Personally, I absolutely would not—collaboration on sets among undergrads[0], for example, is very common (and even officially encouraged) in my experience.
[0] I can't speak for the graduate experience, but I'd assume it's also non-competitive?
> the default is for the professors and students to be collaborators and trust each other rather than be adversaries.
Can you explain why professors and students would be adversaries?
I knew a professor who was sued by a student over her grade on an exam. Going through that made him keep the originals of each student exam and only return photocopies so that he would have your original work if it ever came to that in court.
Toxic event breeding more toxicity.
I made a huge mistake of not applying there and to MIT. I was concerned about the heat in Pasadena and the piles of snow in Boston (silly me. why don't Ivy's relocate someplace nice like Hawaii?). I aced the math SAT-I section without studying and was in GATE and NMS. Instead, I went to a top 50 public state research uni (that became a party school just as I got there) because it was a sure thing. I think I learned more and developed more initiative because it was so sink-or-swim, and the standards were high and the assistance was low. I even hustled an undergrad paid research gig in a top security lab to fix grad students' and postdocs' network code that looked like spaghetti after being puréed in a blender.
> I made a huge mistake of not applying there and to MIT. I was concerned about the heat in Pasadena and the piles of snow in Boston (silly me. why don't Ivy's relocate someplace nice like Hawaii?).
Neither MIT nor Caltech are Ivy League schools.
> I was concerned about the heat in Pasadena and the piles of snow in Boston
As a native Californian living in Pasadena, I also hate the heat -- but, unlike Boston (in my experience), air conditioning is standard, and makes the outside situation matter far less. (It's also not usually that bad, and it's almost always a dry heat.)
The one time I visited Boston (for an undergraduate research program), it was frosty the first few days, and then hellishly humid every day thereafter. The dorm I was staying in didn't really have temperature control, and I got the sense that AC wasn't as common.
Your mileage may vary!
One of the most insane stats I've heard: Roughly 1 in every thousand Caltech alumni has a nobel prize
For context, there are only 603 prize winners total. That's extraordinary.
603 prizes*, 934 unique recipients.
I'd love figures on how many PhDs are issued broken down by school in timeseries format. JDs don't count. Would be helpful to know who is debasing the currency. Caltech definitely isn't. One of the few actually elite institutions left. No fake subjects either.
I'm guessing places like Harvard, UCB and MIT each issued close to 1000 last year. Lower ranked schools, maybe 500 each; probably cumsum to significantly higher than CalTech even with short histories.
What currency? Are PhDs fungible? I doubt it.
Disclosure: Physics PhD, working in industry for 25 years.
Yeah, whatever: I have one too; only 16 years out.
PhD is definitely a currency, and no they're not fungible: I'm trying to figure out which ones are actually worth something. In my experience it's a fairly lousy signal. Every Caltech PhD I've met has been sharp as a tack though.
> *JDs don't count
CalTech doesn't have a law school.
GP meant "by university" by writing "by school"
MIT issues around 600. A little lower in 2020 perhaps due to covid slowdown.
What is a fake subject?
The manager of the Starbucks next door has a PhD in Caribbean Studies.
He’s a really smart dude, total waste.
In the beginning of my career I hoped somehow my path would take me in the direction of a PhD. It's a thing that I still hold in very high esteem, pretty much regardless of the area of study. The amount of work, expertise and determination still seems incredible to me.
As I get older, I get closer and closer to thinking it'll never happen for me. Not because of life or kids or money or whatever, but because I just don't have that amount of commitment to put towards one area of study. Almost a decade (or an actual decade) devoted to just one thing seems insane to me.
It's the thing that, if I won the lottery (or my options become of any value), I'd give a shot. Not sure in what really. I'd start with a master's probably. But if I didn't have to care if what I was doing was kind of ridiculous, I would try.
I am one of the 39 PhDs mentioned in this announcement. Very unexpected to see this on HN.
Congrats
Caltech has been around for 129 years, averaging 78 PhDs a year.
In 2019 Caltech graduated 207 PhDs.
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/caltech-celebrates-the-cl...
I have no frame of reference for this situation, but that sounds like a _ton_
Fun fact: The Caltech campus is a popular location for Hollywood productions. For example, an episode of the Amazing Spider-Man was filmed there. The photo on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Spider-Man_(TV_ser...
is one I took :-) I remember wandering to class one day in a sleep-deprived haze and saw the filming, went back and got my camera.
Well. This is a random post to be seeing on the HN front page.
Yup, Caltech is small.
More children in the academic family tree!
I would love for a well funded organization to use big data analysis to try to build as complete as possible a full family tree of every PhD:
It might help show where there a blind spots :)
Anyone else Ricketts House? Caltech '04 here. I miss that place sometimes.
Current Caltech PhD student here. Happy to answer any questions.
Are the following phrases still used - trolling, flicking? how about 3AM runs to Tommy's? and The Ride? finesse vs brute force and ignorance?
Impressive - I want to meet the recipient!
Sheldon Cooper must be proud!
Order french fries & a coke and we will add a Phd from Caltech for free!