Is she cute?

:P

She’s my cousin, what do you expect me to say? Anyway, she’s too young for you. ;)

Congrats dude! I’m sure you were instrumental in her success.

which one did she choose to go to? Or is he still undecided?
MIT I’m assuming would be the likely choice…

I’m not sure, but I think she’s favoring Caltech. I don’t think MIT would be an obvious choice. I could see myself picking Caltech over MIT.

Really? I guess it might depend on what you want to study. In most fields I’ve been acquainted with MIT is definitively considered more prestigious.

Still It must be awful for her agonizing over such terrible choices. :-)

Interesting. I know MIT is famous, but it seems Caltech is the most prestigous. I think Caltech has a higher nobel laureates per capita than any other school.

Out of curiousity, I googled and got this:

http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/messages/4/8992.html

I know people who have turned down Harvard and MIT to go to Caltech, but no one who has turned down Caltech to go to any other school, except for myself and one guy who said he really wanted to go to Caltech but couldn’t afford the tuition, so he went to Princeton instead. Even now, I kinda wish I would’ve gone to Caltech. I mean, Princeton grads are a dime a dozen, but Caltech grads… those are really rare. :)

Boston’s cooler than LA. Better to start east and move west than to start west and move east.

you speak from experience? ;)

but what if you grew up in LA? (Alice is from LA)

again I still think it depends on what fields graduates are looking to pursue, I know from being on the hiring side of things for a short while in academia and Geosciences Caltech wasn’t even on the radar when I was an undergrad. Certainly the faculty at MIT in my fields of interest was better known at the time. It sounds like it’s different story perhaps in Math and engineering. But these things are fluid and can change.

I do think MIT’s larger student body, alumni base, and endowment make it more “prestigious” even if you may get a better education at Cal. After all prestige is almost entirely based upon public perception and the I think it’s pretty clear which is better know to the public. Still whatever difference there is between the two I doubt it’s significant enough to say there is a wrong choice between the two, especially for undergrad. Again it just really depends on what she wants to pursue.

I’d be curious to see what the latest Princeton review has to say about the two in terms of admission rates etc.

ya, i agree. to the public, mit is more well known. but then again, the public also thinks harvard is the best school in the nation. :p
it seems the people who are involved in the pure sciences and engineering (at least in pton) regard caltech more highly than mit. at the same time, caltech has fewer programs than mit, so for fields such as the humanities, social sciences, and even certain sciences like geoscience (as you pointed out), if you’re going to go down those paths, definitely go to mit instead. personally, i’d pick caltech for the weather, the campus, and the 3:1 faculty-student ratio.

“personally, i’d pick caltech for the weather, the campus, and the 3:1 faculty-student ratio.”

can’t argue with you there. :-)

I think if I were had the luxury of making such a choice it’d be really tough. I certainly think the student culture at Caltech is probably their biggest advantage imo and I’d probably be happier there. But my fields of interest last I looked are better represented at MIT. :-(

She should drop both and go to Stanford.

Best of all possible worlds:

engineering
sciences
sports
entrepeneurship
weather
cool people
incredible reputation
illustrious alumni as well