Comments on: Pros and Cons

By: Gordon R. Vaughan

Gordon R. Vaughan — Wed, 21 May 2008 06:57:14 +0000

Interesting. I was going through my feeds and just found this 6 months later. I’d certainly say that when I was there (’81-84), everyone was VERY stressed out, but I wouldn’t have used the term “bitter”, except for a few. That’s disturbing.

It was surprising how DIFFERENT and LIKABLE and NORMAL folks seemed if you got to see them away from campus, between terms!

Maybe Caltech is once again veering off to the side of the road (wouldn’t be the first time). Student life was so bad by the early ’60s that, when they did a survey of alumni, they were shocked to find very few would send their own kids there! That prompted a lot of changes over the next decade.

The core doesn’t appear to have changed much. It was very hard, but I thought teaching quality was pretty good, for the most part. As far as learning stuff you don’t need, the key word is “interdisciplinary”. It is that important.

In my case, though, I was really disappointed with the teaching quality once I got to certain basic aeronautics classes, and left midway through my junior year. To be fair, aerospace departments were in pretty bad shape at that time, just about everywhere.

My grades were OK but yeah, in case you’re wondering … I was pretty burned out by then. Used to work on my car just to great a break from equations :(

I think colleges would be smart to make life a little more fun as you get farther along!

P.S. - I saw on Twitter you got an Apple internship. Congratulations, & have a great summer!

By: David Smith

David Smith — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 10:54:42 +0000

Dan: Ugh, stuff like that is one of the many reasons I dropped out. Nobody cares if you use stuff you haven’t been taught in the real world :)

(Ob. Warning: They, in fact, expect you to be able to do things you don’t know how to do. Hooray for learning to swim by being thrown into the north atlantic!)

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 07:31:57 +0000

That sounds intense. I wish my school were more like that.

I spend more time figuring out the pedagogy of my courses (”Hm, so the answer is Y, but the class hasn’t covered Y yet, so I’ll answer X.”) than I do the actual content.

I should probably try to transfer somewhere else, but I’m not sure what my odds would be. I’m no Andy Matsuchak :).

By: Waldorf

Waldorf — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:02:59 +0000

Personally I think that the “Core” stuff is really great and exiting, though it seems badly ‘implemented’. It’s supposed to enrich you, not kill you.
Unfortunately most (if not all) universities use the same mean old trick: Make it really ‘difficult’ (not necessarily useful) and watch student drop out. (I think they made a game of it, betting on who will drop first)
Then again thats the reason caltech has a high reputation. (For the record I do not at all agree with measuring quality this way, its about the students, not the school.)