(upbeat music)
- I'm Sam Clark with Crimson Education,
and we're here at Caltech to ask some big questions.
They made The Hulk in that building.
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What is the best thing about Caltech?
I'm here with a turtle, one of the Caltech turtles.
What's the best thing about Caltech?
- It's definitely science-topia.
There's so much interesting stuff going on
behind absolutely every door.
- The research opportunities that it offers, including:
I came here really because of its connection
with the jet propulsion laboratory.
- So I like that it's small,
and it's pretty challenging, actually.
- I think the fact that it's really small is great,
because you get to know your professors,
and you get to know your friends very well.
And it really helps when you're doing work,
or you just wanna hang out with them.
- I think the size of Caltech is the best thing,
because you get a chance to know everyone.
We already know all of our Freshman Class,
and there's about 230 of us.
- For me, it's the fact that there's no
competition between students here,
and we collaborate so much.
And that makes the environment a lot more positive
and makes me work better.
So that's what I like the most about Caltech.
- There's really an atmosphere of great creativity,
and I love seeing so many smart people around me everyday.
- And what's the worst thing about Caltech?
- The lack of social life, I would say, that goes on here.
- Maybe also the fact that it's pretty small,
because you start seeing
the same people over and over again.
- Maybe that it's just like a small environment
so it mostly just feels like
you're a little closed in, and that's it.
- I think the workload is definitely the worst thing,
because we have greater than 12 hours of sets everyday.
- The amount of work (laughs).
- Obviously it's a lot of work,
and it can be tough sometimes,
but it's still really rewarding.
- You know, gender ratio among the undergrads
isn't that terrible, but the gender ratio
among the graduate students,
and certainly among the postdoc's
and faculty and especially like late-career folks,
it's definitely heavy majority of men.
So that's not ideal.
- And what's a typical weekend like?
- I mean usually we're doing work a lot of the time,
but we do have free time so sometimes
we do go to the mountains or go down to Pasadena, LA.
- Sometimes we go into LA.
So like we went to the
Western Conference Finals of The World Series
and stuff like that.
- Either top floor of Millikan or second floor of Sherman.
- The libraries?
- Yeah, those are the two libraries.
We've gone hiking a couple times,
driven up to Malibu, or like done Champion Flats.
- For me, weekends are usually just kinda sleeping in late,
going to club meetings if there are any,
but, yeah, that's about it.
- And what did you write your application essay about?
- Okay so, I pretty much wrote it about science
and there were about 10 puns in there
that had to do with bacteria.
- Some of my essays focused on how much I enjoy STEM
and my passion for that, and some of my other essays
focused about who I am as a person
and what makes me different from some of my other friends,
the unique qualities about me.
- I think I basically just sort of described
like how I really wanted to go to Engineering
and how Caltech would be a good place for me to go
because of the atmosphere here.
- I believe I wrote them about like why I was passionate
about math and science.
- I wrote my application essay about how
Caltech's Computer Science Program is really theoretical
and I like that because, if you know the theory
behind something, then applying it becomes easier.
- Our applications a little different,
so I just wrote mine as first-person narrative
of like sleeping in my laser lab in undergrad.
- Amazing, amazing.
Yeah, anything to add?
- I don't know, I mean it's December 6th
and it's 70 degrees so that's hard to argue with.
- But then it's also finals.
How are you feeling?
- I haven't slept a lot.
I'm averaging like five hours a night,
so hopefully at the end of this week
I'll be able to sleep this weekend.
That's the goal.
- Hibernate a bit.
Perfect, alright thank you so much.
Have a good one.
(upbeat music)
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Insert canon pun or joke.
Can't think of it now.
What do you do on weekends?
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(vocalizing)