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Caltech Pranks MIT's Prefrosh Weekend
doughnuthole writes "Caltech students ventured to Massachusetts this past Wednesday to unleash a series of pranks at MIT's prefrosh weekend. They distributed shirts with MIT on the front and '...because not everyone can go to Caltech' on the back. They placed inflatable palm trees in the infamous Tomb of the Unknown Tool and around the great dome and floated Caltech balloons in building seven. A banner transformed Massachusetts Institute of Technology into That Other Institute of Technology. Saturday night a LASER spelling the letters C-A-L-T-E-C-H was directed at the top of the Green building. A full account of the pranks is located at www.caltechvsmit.com."
College students conduct prank - film at 11!
Seriously, why should I care about this? I mean, it's about nerds and all that, but... how is it "news for nerds"?
See, the problem with this is, MIT has a reputation (deserved or not) as being better than Caltech. Caltech can do this to MIT, and people go "Hah hah, how clever." But, if MIT were to do this to Caltech, people would say "What stupid arrogant assholes, why don't they stay in Cambridge and stop bragging about their superiority at other schools."
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Would anyone at MIT have entertained, even just for a moment, traveling to California to do something similar to the California Institute of Technology? I doubt it.
Not to say that Caltech isn't one of the top engineering schools in the country: of course it is. But it doesn't enjoy MIT's prestige, and these pranks just go to enlarge that prestige.
know that Caltech is more hardcore. We also hear that it's more miserable.
These pranks only seem to indicate that CalTech students have a massive inferiority complex? These pranks are lame. How hard, interesting, creative, or amazing is it to release balloons with C.I.T on them or print T-shirts? Flying thousands of miles just to do that only shows you have too much money and not enough creativity.
Sorry CIT, but you only seemed to have proven to the rest of the world how lame you are (and I didn't even go to either of these schools).
AccountKiller
First they were using a promo video that was at least 10-15 years old, that contained more than a few inuendos about parties and drinking that seemed a little bit out of place since it was a few years after Scott Kreuger's death. Also they were bragging about how the president of Bose Stereo taught a class there every year while the speaker system buzzed the entire hour and a half the presentation lasted. The school might have a ton of resources available but I would rather be at a school where professors actually cared about their students.
looking back, I definitely made the right choice. I'm confident that got more out of my education here at Notre Dame than I would have at MIT and had a lot more fun doing it too.
I never said I was smart, I just said I was smarter than you
First, I don't think we see MIT as a rival in a "we win you lose" sort of way. But let's assume that we do in a "we want the best frosh we can get and a lot of people are considering both schools" sort of way.
A typical Caltech freshman class has about 215 students. MIT's have on the order of 1,000. This means that the schools admit around 500 and 2500 students, respectively. MIT, then, has at LEAST 2000 students in it's prefrosh pool that don't even have Caltech as an option (in a given year), so that even if Caltech took all of the students that are chosing between Caltech and MIT (I don't know the number, but probably more than half of total Caltech admits applied and were admitted to MIT), MIT would have at LEAST about 4/5 of its prefrosh pool in tact. If, on the other hand, Caltech lost all of the students deciding between the two, it's pool of prefrosh would decrease by 1/2.
Such a "rivalry," then, is understandably more important to Caltech than MIT, due to Caltech's small size (which, by the way contributes to lots of its awesomeness).
Regarding a pranking rivalry, I don't think one has really existed in the past at either school. But wouldn't it be cool if there was one? Lots of cool stuff might happen. That was kind of the point of Caltech's work this weekend. We're suggesting a pranking rivalry, in good spirit. Looking at the response, it looks like MIT might agree, but let's keep it in good spirit. Pranking/hacking should be fun for the pranker and the prankee. If you give a good joke, you should be able to take a good joke.
Prankers/Hackers at Caltech and MIT have a lot in common, and should have more interaction. Anyone up for an ice cream social? I'll provide music and a laser light show (much better than the one that was projected on to the green building... there will be more preparation).
No.
And the April Fools waste of time and space stories are staying too. How terrible that you have to scroll past a silly story.
Even though I'm an alum (you guess from where), the following are un-biased examples of inscription hacks.
(1) recent hack by the west coast school
(2) a classic inscription hack
It's clear which of the two is more thoughtful, creative, and true to the spirit of hacking.
Approximately 1/4 of Engineers are foreigners, so it may just be that some of the people who run your country or it's large companies went to MIT.
Were that I say, pancakes?