Word: caltech
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
They did not know it at the time, but they were only two of hundreds of boys (1,200 a year) who also had the necessary credits in mathematics, physics and chemistry to apply for the institute. As it does each year, Caltech picked those with the top academic records, then sent out a team of professors to interview them. The professor who talked to Supple kept asking him why he wanted to be an engineer. He also spoke to Supple's teachers, tried to find out whether the boy was really curious, or merely out for marks. Caltech...
Still cocky from their high-school triumphs, Supple. Andelin and 178 fellow freshmen arrived in Pasadena a week before the term began, were immediately whisked off to Caltech's camp in the San Bernardino Mountains. There, for three days, Nobelmen, freshmen and a few upperclassmen played games, made speeches and put on skits. But each skit or speech turned out to be a veiled warning that tough days lay ahead. Supple and Andelin soon caught on. Says Supple: "I had suddenly run into a bunch of people who were a lot brighter than I was." Adds Andelin...
...physics problems to work out, about 50 pages of history to answer quizzes on each day, and you've got math problems and chemistry experiments. One conclusion you've come to is that high school was never like this." Caltech does its best to cushion the blow when the first blue slips (academic warnings) go out. For a student who has always been accustomed to getting As, the almost inevitable Cs can seem a crushing failure. They are also pretty hard on the proud parents, and it is one of Dean of Freshmen Foster Strong's most...
...make a better thermostat, but gives him, instead, all the principles he will need to know in thermodynamics. No matter what their courses, Supple and Andelin learned by solving problems, and the steps they took in their solutions were far more important than their answers. Theoretically, a Caltech student may ar rive at all the wrong answers on exams, and still get passing marks if his professor believes that his thinking is sound. The whole idea, says Biologist George Beadle, is to avoid "the descriptive tech nique, which is just learning things by rote. In the analytical approach, you learn...
...Ironing Boards. Like Caltech. DuBridge also emerged out of an unlikely background. Born in Terre Haute. Ind., the son of a Y.M.C.A. physical-education instructor, he grew up in a succession of cities from Mount Vernon. Iowa to San Jose, Calif, to Sault Sainte Marie, Mich. Though Lee fished in Lake Superior and watched the ships pass through the locks, he was better known as that studious young fellow in knickers who was so often with a book. At one time, he tried to be a reporter ("but I was too scared to go up and ask the right people...