What differentiates Caltech from MIT?
Unless you have very good reasons to, you ought not neglect the “location, size, student faculty ratio, or that ‘it feels like home.'” factors. I admit that I shared this perspective before choosing which school I wanted to attend, but my experiences since then (not the least including talking to hs friends who went to other school environments) have shown me that this was a ad move. Thankfully I do love the environment at Caltech, but because of my cavalier attitude towards this I might well have ended up at a place where I didn’t. So don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you just want to go to the ‘best’ place on some sort of abstract academic scale… you’ll be living at a particular place surrounded by particular people, which is just as important.
