When I was deciding on colleges, I went looking for blogs. Ranking statistics, wikipedia pages, and university websites are good in their own right–but I knew that I wanted to spend my next four(?) years somewhere that fit me inside and out. I had no money to go visiting a ton of colleges, so I turned to the next best thing: blogs by students expressing their fun and frustrating university lives.
After weeks of decision-making, T-charts, and bemoaning financial aid, in the end it was simple: I visited Caltech, I loved it, and I chose it. And then I came back home and waited through The Longest Summer Ever for it to begin. Biding my time, I looked for websites, stories, livejournals–anything that would give me more details about where I was going.
There was very little to be found. And a resounding nothing from female students, perhaps understandable, as they make up only 30% of the school’s population.
Call me crazy, but I saw this as a challenge.
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This blog is for prospective students out there looking, like I did, for a little more intimate view of Caltech; and especially for women looking into this school and wanting to hear a woman’s perspective.
As of this writing, I don’t know if Caltech is the perfect fit for me. In fact, as of this writing, school hasn’t even started yet. I have no idea if I’ll only be able to update once a month, if I’ll have good things to say, if I’ll pass math, or if I’ll drop out and end up a wandering minstrel. That life has always beckoned…
In any case, it’s much more fun for the story to unfold for all of us as I go along. Plus, for entirely egocentric reasons, I do so like keeping diaries.
Without further ado, then (as this is entirely too much ado already), here are my Caltech diaries.
