Caltech (California) reviews

Caltech has lots of smart people and you need to face the pressure of competition and finishing lots of work. But it all depends on your advisor. But as a postdoc or student, the salary is not good if you need to support a family, but this is the same or even worse in any other universities else.

- Post-docs have to pay for the gym (used to be for free, and is for free for students and other faculty) - Post-docs are low priority, relatively, for HR. I found that they were not very motivated to help with issues regarding housing and other benefits, insisting on arbitrary rules, even under exceptional circumstances. - The administration is a bit slow in responding to complains about (sexually, verbally, socially) abusive famous faculty. I think there is room for improvement, and it is underway. - Caltech puts a relatively low cap on salaries for post-docs, so that the salaries are lower than they are at many other, similar institutions, despite the high cost of living in Pasadena.