Career Technical: Fill & Download for Free

I don't think there's any way to answer that question. "Hardest in the world?" Who would/could know?But I do know that, at least between 1960 and 1964 (when I was an undergraduate at Caltech), the program was a challenge for just about everyone there. Most of the undergraduates had been 1st or 2nd in their high school graduating class and were emotionally unprepared for a population where half would be below average. The differences in academic preparedness were unanticipated and challenging. (Having been the "teacher" for much of my high school senior year in math class, I spent a lot of effort during my first year at Caltech trying, with limited success, to catch up with my classmates.)The undergraduate dropout rate at Caltech was remarkably (and tragically) high in those days. As I recall, just over 50% of entering Freshmen (and there were only men at that time) graduated with their class. And around 30% never graduated at all. We "joked" that Pasadena had the smartest taxicab drivers in the world, as that was the dropouts' next-step career option of choice.The situation may have changed in the last 45 years. Or not.I will say that the rigor of the Caltech undergrad experience had a great influence on me and was, after all, a major contributor to, what I feel, was a successful and rewarding technical career at Bell Labs and, later, HP.Bottom line question: would I recommend going to Caltech?Bottom line answer: It depends.If a student were REALLY capable, I would unreservedly recommend going to Caltech. It was (and, I expect, still is) a world class environment. (Read Herman Hesse's "Glass Bead Game" aka "Majester Ludi" for a glimpse.) If the student was not SURE they would be in the top half of the Caltech class, I'd recommend going elsewhere and running with the top dogs there.

People fail out of Caltech due to it (other schools too, though it's much easier to fail out of Caltech due to it than, say, a more low-pressure school).See How common is it for Caltech students to fail out due to video game addiction?Also, see Advice - Page 816. Do not play video games. This is unequivocal advice. You really should take it.I have seen more promising careers ruined or seriously damaged by World of Warcraft or online poker than by all other problems combined. Of course, people who become hopelessly addicted to a multiplayer game have other underlying problems, but that doesn't stop this from being a particularly insidious opportunistic addiction.Video games eat time and make it likely that you will find it hard to resist giving up more of it. They are incredibly costly. If you are a person prone to addiction, they can cost you a college education. (If you fail a few terms completely, as people who get addicted to WoW are seen to do every now and then, the next best school to take you won't be MIT or Stanford or Berkeley, at least one of which probably took you out of high school. It'll be Pasadena City College.)It is unlikely that you really know whether you are prone to video game addiction. (The hardest working person I've ever known was.) You are in a risk category. Techers are very good at committing themselves to technical challenges, and video games are designed to be extremely engaging technical challenges. They are more immediately entertaining than problem sets, too. And the only financial incentive of video game manufacturers is to maximize the games' addictiveness.Sure, some people can play harmlessly for a few hours and go on with their lives. Some people lose the most valuable thing they ever had. Since the payoff in the first case isn't that big and the loss in the second case is catastrophic, don't gamble in this particular way. If you want to gamble in a relatively harmless way, drive to Vegas and bet $1000 on black.

I think I am qualified to answer this question for a couple of reasons:I headed Caltech's Entrepreneurship Club ("eClub") from 2011 to 2012, organizing most of the activities during that timeI worked for an angel investment group in Pasadena as a liason to Caltech, where I set up a weekly opportunity for Caltech guests to come listen to company screeningsI worked as an intern for a venture capital firm in Pasadena in my last six months of graduate school at CaltechGranted, things may have changed in the 2.5 years since I left Caltech, but my collective thoughts on this subject are likely still germane.The Entrepreneurship Community of CaltechOutside Caltech:The Pasadena Angels - an angel investment group in PasadenaIdealab - a start-up incubator in Pasadena headed by a successful entrepreneur and Caltech alumnus, Bill GrossStartEngine - an incubator near UCLATechZulu - an event company that showcased new start-upsVarious venture capital firms (Andreeson-Horowitz, California Technology Ventures, etc...)UCLA's and USC's business school entrepreneurship clubsInside Caltech:eClub - Caltech's Entrepreneuship ClubOffice of Technology Transfer - the office in charge of filing patents, selling patents, and finding patentable technology at CaltechKenneth Pickar - a semi-permanent lecturer/professor with lots of connections who teaches business-school type classes at CaltechVarious professors interested in starting businesses based on technology from their labsGeneral Expectations of Caltech Students from InvestorsOutside of Caltech, the general expectation was as follows: A business savvy person would be able to find a brilliant scientist or engineer with a golden idea. Ideally, this technical person would be in need of a non-technical partner who could handle things like raising money, hiring employees, and generally running a business. So, the expectation was usually that the talent at Caltech would only be capable of running the technological side of a business. However, it was expected that the technology side might be so cutting edge—or even patentable—that first-mover advantages would bring immense returns.Consistent with these expectations, a lot of events were marketed as "mixers" wherein MBA students from UCLA and USC were invited to network with Caltech students. The hope from the community was that these events would enable entrepreneurial-minded business school types to find a technological partner or co-founder. There might've been an event like this once every 2-3 months, typically hosted by an investor group such as StartEngine, the Pasadena Angels, Idealab, TechZulu, or one of the business school entrepreneurship clubs.General Expectation of Caltech Students from MBA studentsTypically, entrepreneurial-minded MBA students had spent lots of time and coursework on how to draft business plans. In many cases these students already had business plans ready to go or some technology in mind that they wanted to act on. From their standpoint, they simply lacked the technological know-how to act on their planned ideas. Thus, the general expectation from this aspect of the community was that they would be able to find Caltech talent—usually undergrads—who could build their product and then participate in the eventual profits of success.Caltech Graduate Students and EntrepreneurshipDuring my tenure at Caltech, graduate students were far more interested in being entrepreneurs that undergraduates. Graduate students mostly hoped that they could leverage some sort of dynamite technological or scientific idea for the basis of a new business. This idea would hopefully be patentable, which would mean that the Caltech Office of Technology Transfer could help out with connections to investors and such. This office typically gave workshops on how to apply for patents with them.In my experience, Caltech undergraduates wanted to work for big established firms right out of school. They liked the idea of working for start-ups as a later career move, though. This made sense since the computer science savvy students could make a lot of money from a first job and forgo dealing with the uncertainty of a start-up.Generally speaking, Caltech students wanted to run their own show when it came to starting a business. There was a broad feeling that MBA types would be unable to add value to a start-up. Either Caltech students couldn't appreciate that value, or they just didn't believe in the fluffy business school talk. In some cases, Caltech students felt that if they were smart enough to know the technology, they were smart enough to run the business as well. Remember that Caltech graduate students were used to being one of the top students in all their classes throughout high school and college. So, it was hard to convince them that an MBA student with no technical background could bring anything useful to the table.Overall TakeawaysThe culture was supportive of entrepreneurship, but expectations were mismatched all around. Caltech students wanted to start and run their own businesses. MBA students wanted to leverage Caltech talent without involving them in learning how to run the business they would be crucial to the existence of. The old model of patenting some technology from a professor's lab and then using a graduate student to run the spin-off business was not working anymore. And, investors typically weren't interested in anything that wasn't patentable.