Talk:California Institute of Technology/Archive 1

Old discussions
Adding sections on Caltech's academics and social/scientific contributions might help round out the article, which currently focuses on student life. &mdash;Gku 22:07, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)

October 19, 2003. If you search for "CalTech" on the Wiki search box, you are taken to a Google page that has links to the "CalTech" followed by the "California_Institute_Of_Technology" Wiki pages. These pages appear out-of-synchronization with each other, eg, alumnus Corbato is appears on the "California_..._Technology" page, but not on "CalTech". If you "Edit This Page", you will be taketo that of the "California_Institute_Of_Technology". Is this a temporary bug in Wikipedia, or should the "CalTech" page be removed altogether? Any thoughts as to what is going on? Or is this because "Google" is simply not honoring redirects? Thus, can a modification be made so that "Google" will show "California_Institute_Of_Technolgy" as the first result even when searching for "CalTech"?


 * The top two links on Google when I do this same search are Caltech and California Institute of Technology, and the former is a redirect to the latter; the pages that come up when I click on each are identical but for the "redirected from" message. This is as it should be (see Naming conventions).


 * I think you may have been loading pages out of Google's cache. Google is not aware of the internal structure

of Wikipedia; it caches http://www.wikipedia.org/Caltech and http://www.wikipedia.org/California_Institute_of_Technology as separate pages. The cached pages are indeed out of sync. There is nothing that we can do about that. Hopefully Wikipedia's internal search function will be reenabled soon.


 * Zack 19:24, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * (October 20, 2003) Thanks Zack, but I'm actually clicking on the header links supplied by Google, and not the "cached" links. I do routinely clear out my own web browser's cache, and I was wondering if you did the same to your browser, then perhaps you would see what I'm seeing (or maybe not).   I look forward to the reenabling of Wikipedia's internal search, and sorry about the circular redirect...I had been trying to "fix" the problem, and only made the problem worse!

Ricketts slogan issue
So apparently an edit was made by 131.215.247.125 on 1 Nov that specified the color of Ricketts Hovse as "Maroon" and their slogan to be "F*** God Dead". And then on 20 Nov, Melaen reverted that edit with the note "deleted vandalism".

Now I hypothesize that the reason that Melaen thought if was vandalism was because he/she did not think that "F*** God Dead" was really a slogan. While I am not an expert on Ricketts (I am a Mole, not a Scurve), and I don't know if Ricketts has an official slogan; I have nevertheless heard Ricketts use the phrase "F*** God Dead" on several occasions, and it is possible that it is actually their slogan.

Can someone who knows more about Ricketts help us with this? -- Spoon! 20:10, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The Ricketts House motto is "Prend Moi Tel Que Je Suis," French for "Take Me As I Am". The house also has an inscription, "Stet Fortuna Domus", which may be mistaken for but is not a motto. The disputed "slogan" is simply a long-standing tradition, also not a motto. The official color is indeed maroon. - a skurve

Visiting Notable Faculty
He may not have been tenured at Caltech, but it is worth mentioning that Einstein spent a year as a visiting faculty member. He was stolen from us by Princeton, when Millikan wouldn't match their offer.

Satellite Houses
I've never lived there, but the off-campus houses such as Munth, Hazard County, and Prufrock Houses might be worth adding. Maybe those should be listed under their respected houses, where applicable. Marks House is less of a house than Avery, but it has walls, a roof, and students living in it, for what that's worth.
 * Some of the House-affiliated off-campus houses could be discussed under their respective House pages, but that would definitely be more appropriate at the House System at the California Institute of Technology page. - Rwald
 * Yes, these things might be discussed under their respective houses or something like that in a balanced way. One might be careful not to talk about stuff that is overly obscure, however, because (before they were merged) the articles for the Houses were voted to be deleted multiple times because people didn't think they were encyclopedic.  Also, we want material that is relevant to the House System and culture rather than just a list of all the residential locations. -- Spoon! 09:02, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I've been thinking about the "encyclopedic" thing. Do the undergraduates still perform the Millikan Egg Drop Experiment regularly? How about the competing Pumpkin Drop on Halloween? I think something about those traditions has real historic value, and is certainly "encyclopedic". It ought to go in the article about the houses, though, if it goes in at all. Oh -- I'm a Lloydie (1973). DavidCBryant 12:26, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The Millikan Egg Drop is ancient history at this point, but the Pumpkin Drop was alive and well at least through 2004. N6 19:01, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

New page of alumni and faculty?
It seems to me that the lists of distinguished alumni and faculty has gotten too long to fit naturally in the article. I suggest that the lists be removed from this page and incorporated into a separate List of Caltech people article (see, for instance, List of Stanford University people). -- Eb.hoop 4 July 2005 20:24 (UTC)

Sounds good. -- Spoon! 7 July 2005 22:05 (UTC)


 * Do you want to do it, Eb.hoop? -- Spoon! 01:38, 22 September 2005 (UTC)


 * While you're at it, add Eugene Merle Shoemaker to a list of notable former faculty. I didn't see a good place to put it into the article as it stands; it seems once someone leaves Caltech for any reason other than graduation, he or she is removed from the article. Prof. Shoemaker was a professor of geology at Caltech in the 1970s at least. Aumakua 22:52, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Even though I was a math troll, I remember Gene Shoemaker fondly. He tried to convince me to become a planetologist during freshman orientation in 1969. He was very enthusiastic about extending the scope of geology to the inner planets. Heck of a nice guy, and a lot of fun. DavidCBryant 20:22, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I have made the list at List of California Institute of Technology people.--nixie 22:40, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

RF
"Caltech students have been known for the many pranks (also known as RF's, short for Real Fun) they have pulled off in the area."

Isn't RF short for rat f***, after the habit of freezing a lab rat in LN2 and throwing it through the transoms which are famously above most of the doors in the South hovses?
 * Other people share this view & the page had been changed to reflect it. A current Caltech grad student apparently thought it was vandalism (it is NOT) & reverted it.  Perhaps it should be excluded as being possibly offensive or possibly apocryphal.  But it is NOT vandalism.


 * agreed, it is not vandalism, it is, in my experience, widely believed to be true, or was 25-years ago. --Joe Decker 17:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I have direct personal experience with "RF", as in "He didn't show up for the alley challenges last night and we lost, so let's go RF the bastard." It was pretty common among the scurves, and the Flems to a lesser extent. And on a related topic, I don't remember too many FGD's accompanied by the breaking of a beer bottle, but I do remember a lot of FGD's that involved some sort of ritual with a big concrete urn in the center of the Ricketts courtyard. (I wasn't invited, but my room in Lloyd was straight across the Olive Walk from Ricketts when I was a freshman.) The scurves used to light fires in that thing, and even set off small explosions. I think they finally managed to break it sometime early in 1971. DavidCBryant 20:33, 9 December 2006 (UTC)


 * During my tenure, FGDs exclusively involved throwing bottles (beer, liquor, or otherwise) onto Crud roof in the courtyard.


 * The firepot was broken at some point several decades ago--1971 sounds about right--and replaced. As of 2000-2001 it was sort of the spiritual center of Ricketts House, and fires were lit in it on a regular basis. As a result of something of a crusade by then-president David Baltimore, it was permanently removed in 2002. N6 21:09, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Quarter system
If Caltech has three academic terms and does not offer a summer session then why is it called the quarter system? Shouldn't it be called the trimester system? btm talk 09:16, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Maybe because there's time for summer session, despite there not actually being one? Also, one could view SURFs (undergraduate summer research) as a "forth quarter." Anyway, this is what they're officially called, whatever the reason - Rwald
 * You can think of the "quarter" to mean a quarter of the calendar year, or something like that. Also, the term "quarter" allows us to compare with other institutions that also follows a similar schedule and calls their terms "quarters"; and whether there is a summer term should not affect the naming of the rest of the system since summer terms are not part of the traditional school year anyway.  The term trimester (three months) usually means the same thing as quarter since a quarter of a year has three months. -- Spoon! 08:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

not as bad as MIT, but still...

 * There are many annual traditions at Caltech, demonstrating the weird and wonderful creativity of its inhabitants.

Does anyone else find this article a bit too gushy about CalTech? It reads more like a colorful news magazine article rather than reference information. It's definitely a far different style than Britannica's (though I doubt many Wikipedia editors have read a real encyclopedia recently).


 * agreed Tony Bruguier 13:07, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * agreed -- Tony's changes seem measured and entirely reasonable (I'm a Caltech alum, so feel free to keep an eye out for my own biases.) I did attempt to find references that support the pre-edit suggestion that the Caltech Honor system is (I personally believe it is) unusually effective and believed to be unusually effective by the people at Caltech themselves.  I found some reference'd support for this idea with respect to academic issues in discussions of the Honor system at other institutions, e.g., MIT.  However, I also found at least one deeply powerful essay that discussed how (in one era, the piece wasn't dated) the  Honor System failed women in non-academic issues at the institution.  Nothing struck me as sufficient basis by itself, however, to really justify including a lot of boosterism or slapping of the Honor Code, save the still-existing and true statement that most Caltech exams are take-home, a fact-based statement that I think does rise to the level of interesting and encyclopedic information.  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/broadband/chi-photoop-flashhtml,0,1575697.htmlstory?coll=chi-photooverline-411 --Joe Decker 06:56, 31 May 2006 (UTC) (signed later, I negelected to sign this originally)


 * Academic boosterism is an ongoing problem. People are much too ready to quote admissions-department blurbs, or self-serving "About XYZ..." web pages. It's not as bad as it was. It's important to keep nibbling away at it everywhere, because boosterism is a contagious disease, and one of the commonest justifications for it is to say "Well, gee, most of the university articles have [six paragraphs of U. S. News rankings] [several hundred names of allegedly notable alumni] [the word 'prestigious' in them] so why are you singling out XYZ?"


 * Anyway, what's the most egregiously gushy stuff in the MIT article? Dpbsmith (talk) 18:18, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I think it's important to include the fact that the Honor Code extends to non-academic matters just as much as academic matters - take-home exams aren't even a tiny fraction of what the Honor Code represents, at least in the opinion of this freshman. I'll draft a list of examples, and add them to the main article after some discussion here.  --ElizabethFong 13:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with you that that is an important aspect of the HC.--Joe Decker 06:56, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Footnote regarding naming
While "Cal Tech" is not a generally accepted nickname for Caltech, "CIT" is, to some degree, sanctioned, in that it appears in the Caltech alma mater, which dates back to the 1920's:

"[...] The halls of fame resound thy name, Noble CIT!"

This may just have been the result of the word "Caltech" being fairly ugly-sounding when sung, and offering few more promising rhymes than "speck," "dreck," and "nervous wreck." But this is sung at graduation, with professors and alumni frequently joining in, so I think we can say "CIT" is recognized.

Now, aren't you glad I took the time to make this immensely vital correction? -- Anonymous


 * Yes! I was in the glee club. Oh -- and I love your rhymes. You really should write poetry. DavidCBryant 12:45, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

History section
I just tweaked a few sentences in the "History" section of the article to make it easier to read.

One thing I noticed is a plethora of hyperlinks. I understand links to names of people, and buildings, and things like that. But a link on an everyday noun like "faculty"? That's confusing, to me.

Anyway, I just thought I'd put a sign up here and see if anyone's likely to object if I take a few superfluous hyperlinks out of that section. DavidCBryant 12:56, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Tradition section
I just tweaked the "tradition" section, to make it more "encyclopedic". I'm adding a few notes here, for background.

The "Millikan egg-drop experiment" was a style of inter-House challenge when I was a freshman (1969 - '70). Briefly, two-man teams competed to see who could collect the greatest mass of eggs inside a plastic bucket. Said eggs were dropped from the top of Millikan by one's teammate. I think the limit was 5 dozen eggs per team. Not many people kept much egg inside the bucket, because it tended to splash around all over the participants. I know for a fact that the name was a deliberate pun on "oil-drop experiment". Everybody laughed about that.

I might be wrong about this, but I believe I witnessed the original "pumpkin-drop experiment". I studied pretty hard as a frosh. Anyway, on Halloween in 1969 I was inside the library about 9:00 pm studying physics, when I was suddenly startled by the swift passage of something orange outside the window. Two more orange blurs passed in quick succession. When I left the library, there was pumpkin strewn all over the sidewalk.

Anyway, I told my buddy Phil Marcus (a Darb) about this the next day, and he told me that he and a few other Darbs had dropped the pumpkins. They weren't frozen pumpkins, either. And nobody claimed to be looking for a "triboluminescent spark". Marcus just wanted to see how far the pumpkin would splatter.

Oh -- about the "Ride". My freshman year the playing of the "Ride" was sort of sporadic in the various houses. But in 1970 the first female undergrads were admitted to Caltech. As I recall, those very brave women were all housed in adjacent rooms, where Blacker meets Dabney. Anyway, the guys in Blacker and Dabney responded by designing a system to tie the stereos in different rooms together -- I'm not sure exactly how it worked, because I'm not a double-E troll. I do remember that the guys in the south houses had coordinated things pretty well by the end of the winter term in 1971, so that one sound source provided synchronous input to 20 or 30 different amplifiers. You could hear that rendition of the "Ride" all the way over at Bridge. How do I know? I was already outdoors at 7:00 am on Monday that finals week, so I conducted the experiment. DavidCBryant 12:57, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Graduation rates
The page states: However, the situation has improved greatly over the last few decades; approximately 90% of entering students graduate in six years or less, compared to less than a third 40 years ago.. This seems wrong to me (I went to Caltech about 36 years ago). As I recall, it was about 1/3 that *did not* graduate within 6 years. At freshman orientation, we were told "Look to your right, look to your left - one of you three will not be here in 4 years". Also, looking at the yearbooks for these years shows roughly 2/3 of the students who were freshman 4 years ago were now seniors. Unless someone has a better reference, I'll change this. LouScheffer 19:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Good eye, Lou! I'm sure you're right about the graduation rate. I was a freshman in 1969, and we lost a lot of our classmates after the first year -- something like 15% - 20%, as I recall. Most of the early washouts were students from California (California residents got preferential treatment in the admissions process back then) who really couldn't hack it at Caltech. The dropout rate (for my class) was a lot lower after that first year, so 1/3 washouts and 2/3 graduating sounds about right. DavidCBryant 22:44, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

The paragraph about graduation rates has been taken by out by User:ElKevbo as unsourced. It was:


 * Caltech has the lowest four-year graduation rate among the leading US universities—about 80%. This is despite the fact that entering students have consistently higher average test scores (on the SAT 1 and 2) than any other university or college, as indicated by the major college rankings. However, the situation has improved greatly over the last few decades; approximately 90% of entering students graduate in six years or less, compared to a substantially smaller fraction in the 1960's and 70's.

While certainly not well sourced, it rings true to me. It's also not surprising - engineering and science have always had lower graduation rates, and they form the vast majority of Caltech majors. So it's not surprising that Caltech has a lower rate than schools with a higher fraction of humanities. So I'll stick it back in with a citation needed flag. If you think this is wrong, feel free to discuss... LouScheffer 06:03, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I think it's wrong to insert poorly or completely unsourced information into Wikipedia articles. Please don't knowingly do so.  --ElKevbo 11:20, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Unsourced and controversial, I agree completely. But I think this is not controversial, in which case the right thing to do is supply the citations.  Caltech's 4 year rate is about 80% (that's in the source that's there).  This is definitely low for a top-tier school (the best reference would be one of the rankings, but I don't have any of them on hand, or access to them).  This should be an easy reference to find to any of the millions of folks who have these rankings on hand.  The applicants are surely well qualified - this is not controversial at all - so the comment about SAT scores should be verified (again from one of the reports) or corrected.  Finally, the graduation rates were lower several decades ago (see comments above from people who were there) but finding this data on line may be hard.  Surely old yearbooks can be used, but a more formal source must exist. LouScheffer 16:50, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I dislike seeing so much emphasis placed on graduation rates. People who drop out cause types of cross-fertilization that would not happen under a 100% graduation rate, though I guess that notion would be too altruistic and vague for the Admissions Office.

Vernacular
Random point of curiosity for me: was "flame" or "flame out" part of the student vernacular 30+ years ago? These terms are used today to refer to those who fail out of Caltech. Specifically, to flame is to fail to pass a required minimum number of units in any one term, resulting in probationary action or expulsion at the discretion of the Undergraduate Academic Standards and Honors committee (UASH, pronounced "YOU-ash"). The term possibly originated with the pun "you flick, you flame, UASH". "Flicking" is a term for putting off work which also may or may not have been in use in the late 60s/early 70s. :) N6 23:04, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I was there 71-75. I remember flick exactly the way you describe it, but not flame. LouScheffer 23:14, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

In 1969-71, "flick it in" meant "to quit from exhaustion or frustration", at least in Page House (Herbert Ward).


 * I was there 80-84. I remember both flick and flame, and I believe flame was in use when I arrived in Fall 1980.  --Joe Decker 15:13, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Lou. I remember "flick off" as meaning "let's go have a beer", or something like that. "Flame out" sounds like something that might happen to a jet engine, or a rocket, not anything about a student. But now I'm curious about something ... are people who study real hard still "trolls"? As in "Is he going to flick off and come with us to Tommy's for a chili-cheesburger?" "Nah ... he's a troll." DavidCBryant 12:04, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, "troll" is still in use. N6 17:38, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * How about "snake"? When did that transition over to "troll"?  When did the "Snake Trophy" (the Interhouse Scholastic Achievement Trophy) disappear? CraigMontuori 131.215.90.179 03:05, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I do remember hearing people use "snake" as a synonym for "troll". But I'm a Lloydie ... the use of "troll" was ubiquitous in Lloyd House ca 1970, and "snake" was something some people in the other houses did (sorry, I'm not exactly sure which ones). I have a vague memory of the trophy Craig is asking about, but I'm not conversant with its history.


 * I heard an explanation once from Bill Criss (another Lloydie) about the origin of "troll" – that "the trolls live under Bridge", as in the fairy tale Billy Goat Gruff (and, of course, a pun on the Bridge building, which had (still has?) a lot of small rooms in the basement – I remember using CITRAN on an IBM 1052 terminal in the basement at Bridge when I was a freshman). Did anyone else ever hear that story about trolls? DavidCBryant 11:36, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I think it was at one point "trolls under DuBridge," according to some things I read.  See page 28 of 57. CraigMontuori 131.215.90.179 16:58, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the link to the J. Kent Clark interview, Craig. "Under DuBridge" to "under duh-bridge" makes a lot of sense to me. Lee DuBridge left Caltech the year I started (1969), and I only got to meet him once, at his going-away party. The connection you pointed out is very interesting. I also enjoyed Clark's little pun &hellip; "bringing more applied mathematicians to Caltech is like carrying trolls to Newcastle." ;^>  DavidCBryant 18:14, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm trying to remember now where the steam tunnel feature named "The Tomb of the Unknown Troll" was, at least as early as 1980 (but lasting no later than my leaving Caltech in 1984) there was a desk and chair in a crawlspace under a wooden section of flooring that was, IIRC, somewhere Bridge-ish, but ... well, it's been a long time, and memory is fickle.--Joe Decker 15:17, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

←Back to "trolling" and "flaming," if you don't mind: I was also there in 80-84. "Troll" and "flame" were indeed already part of the regular vernacular by the fall of '80. In Dabney, at least, during my time at Tech a "troll" was someone who studied hard and didn't participate in some social event (the term "social event" used somewhat facetiously here, in a context of the Dabney culture of the time); "to troll" meant to go off and study instead of participating in a particular social event; "trolls" didn't try to pretend they could ace their classes without studying; and "trolls" were often, but not always, "cutthroats" as well- people who ruined grade curves and such, and so were at once admired and despised. To "flame out" (or just to "flame," as said by more frequent users of the term) meant to quit or fail a class or a term, as to "burn out," but with added drama. GrammarmongerTALK 16:50, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Photos
Having visited Caltech this winter, I took several nice pictures of the campus (the olive walk, the newly renovated South Houses, the Milikan Library, and the Beckman Auditorium). So, if anyone thinks this article needs more/different pictures, just tell me.

P.S. I don't know how to get the pictures from my gallery. If someone could tell me how to, that would be nice. Sicilianshotgun 17:38, 17 March 2007 (UTC)Sicilianshotgun

Pranks section
There were some phrases in the pranks section that were really poorly worded to sound very biased for Caltech. I know that most of the people editing this page are probably current students or alumni, so I totally understand the bias (and we have problems with that elsewhere, too), but I did my best to clean it up without removing any information (just implications made by the wording).

I didn't add anything about Caltech's distribution of fake newspapers at MIT this year, because it wasn't a creative or original prank and was very obvious while it was going on to most MIT students. If someone else wants to add something on that, feel free... but I'll be back to proofread for NPOV that makes it sound like the greatest prank in the history of time. (Caltech's greatest prank, in my humble opinion anyway, was the Rose Bowl hack... I really like that, and it is (or was at the time) original and awesome. Let's see more of that from you brilliant folks!) :) int3gr4te 21:26, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

In the 1970's, there was a series of politically motivated pranks culminating in a large sign that read "IMPEACH NIXON" attached to the East face of Millikan Library. The sign appeared in the Pasadena Star News the following day (May 6, 1973), and went out on the AP wire service. Everybody knows about the Rose Bowl prank(s), but this episode is almost unknown outside of the Legends of Caltech series. Is it worth including here? One notable thing about this episode is that the faculty rallied behind the right of the students to make such a protest over the wishes of a certain donor who threatened to withhold a $1M donation unless the responsible parties were punished. The faculty unanimously voted to take no such action. There are very few references to this on the web, one of which is here: http://zenoferox.blogspot.com/2006/08/avast-ye-techers.html Mediasponge (talk) 22:46, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

General Article Quality & Questions
As a current student, I am slightly disappointed with the quality of the Caltech Wikipedia article. I have been making minor corrections in language and grammar over the past few days, and will continue as I keep rereading the article. But I have a few more significant questions about the page:

1) Why are the rankings in the History section, as opposed to (a subsection of) the Academics section? Barring significant opposition, I will likely move the rankings to the Academics section sometime today or tomorrow.

2) Why does one paragraph of the History section describe in such significant detail the 1971 earthquake and its aftermath? The description of Throop Hall's demolition (the bits about the rebar and the wrecking ball) seems a bit excessive for a "main-page" History section, especially given that the rest of the history, including those parts which seem to me most "significant" (paragraph 4 in particular) are written tersely in comparison.

3) In this vein: the History section overall is a bit hodge-podge. The first four paragraphs are relevant, but the rest seems stitched together. Why is there trivia about our Numb3rs connection in this section? What does the last paragraph have to do with Caltech's history? Is a History section the usual place for Nobel prize facts? (I have not, admittedly, checked other schools' pages about this particular question.)

4) Does anyone have some more attractive pictures that could be set in relevant places in the article? Although an excessive number of pictures amounts to clutter, the current page seems sparse and empty compared to the pages of other major universities, and in this particular case I agree with them: a few more well-placed pictures would add to the Caltech article, not detract from it or add clutter.

5) Was the Caltech Alumni Association section inserted by someone in the Caltech PR department? Is it actually relevant to an encyclopedic article about Caltech?

These are the points most noticeable to me, but some others are: is the precise delineation of academic departments excessive? Although our recent basketball travails and victories have been chronicled in the press nationally, doesn't the Athletics section seem dominated by facts about our basketball teams, and therefore a bit arbitrary? As there is an undergraduate academics section, shouldn't there be a graduate academics section? Do you guys find that the language in the article, especially as it progresses, is more than occasionally unprofessional?

And these are just the notes about what is there. I understand a philosophy of terseness and directness, but the Caltech page feels more incomplete than terse. While we may wish to avoid some of the superfluous information present on other major universities' pages, I think we would do well to take a few cues from the better college articles and expand neglected sections, add others, and trim the unnecessary or trivial parts. As just two examples, I think both the Honor Code and Ditch Day sections could be expanded fairly and reasonably, without adding superfluous content.

The.road 21:55, 4 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with most of your points. Since this is wikipedia, I'd say just go ahead and change them.  People who don't like them can modify as well, or discuss here in case of serious dispute.  But your objections and possible changes sound reasonable... LouScheffer 23:44, 4 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I took out the list of all the departments out - it seems that none of the other university articles has one, and besides it really disrupts the flow of the article. I added links to each division's website so that the curious will be able to readily find the information without needing it to be in the article itself.  Antony-22 05:20, 24 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I am surprised, too, at the general article quality. This is a "B" article? Man. It's a little tacky to use the phrase "space probe" as opposed to "satellite," because in part JPL does mostly "deep space" rather than Earth orbital stuff.  I did learn the basis for Caltech vs. CalTech (goes back to Millikan et al).  I doubt that the Tech PR Dept. would have much to do with this page.  Maybe on one hand, they should. 143.232.210.150 (talk) 21:44, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, the Caltech article is pretty feeble compared to the MIT one. Research is the primary reason people go to Caltech, yet we don't have a section on Caltech's research? This really needs to be changed. TBSchemer (talk) 00:42, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Caltech and Cal Poly
I'm from out of state (NV) and thinking of applying to CIT. I recently saw someone wearing a t-shirt that said "Cal Poly" and below it said 'San Luis Obispo'. Are Caltech and Calpoly somehow related?


 * Not at all. Cal Poly is the California Polytechnic State University. Many people confuse them though, perhaps because both "cal" and "tech" appear the name, and because Cal Poly is larger and maybe more well known (in California at least). --Spoon! 04:16, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Caltech motto no longer exists
According to Caltech PR, Caltech no longer has a motto, from personal correspondence:
 * When it was used on the logo back in the '60s, it said "The truth shall make you free." But it has nothing to do with science.....that quote is from the Bible...and we stopped using it altogether in the early '80s.

Potential solutions:
 * Ask the mention of the motto
 * Mention the motto, but say it is now depreciated.

Suggestions? Romanpoet (talk) 21:59, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Just because it's not used doesn't mean it's no longer official, unless there was a vote of the faculty (or whoever) to remove it. I would leave it but explain the situation in a footnote.  This is what's done in the Harvard University article, where the "official" motto, Christo et Ecclesiae, is also unused.  Antony-22 (talk) 23:14, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Redirect
I suggest we put redirect from abbreviation of the name, Caltech, to this article as it is famous also with this name.  Gülməmməd Talk 13:14, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The redirect Caltech exists, since 2002. Are you having some problem with it?  -- Coneslayer (talk) 13:19, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
 * hmm...I tried, it didn't work, seems there have been some misspelling.  Gülməmməd Talk 13:31, 31 July 2008 (UTC)