[arpora]

Caltech grad here. Having worked with a couple of MIT newgrads just after graduation, I think the biggest contributor to the difference in attitudes is the degree to which Caltech undergrads are isolated from the world during undergrad.

At Caltech, you pretty much never interact with any source of external validation. Because the graduating class size is only ~250, most companies don't actively recruit you so you never get the feeling that your skillset is in demand; the few companies that do, are often highly specialized or excessively selective so you're either a poor fit if you lack the specialization or you come to believe that the hiring standards are a lot higher worldwide than they are. As someone in startups, it feels like VC firms actively thirst after MIT students during undergrad to establish relationships with the students there, but pretty much no student at Caltech will ever interact with a VC prior to graduation. While Caltech may be reputable among a certain demographic, it's likely your extended family, especially if you're an immigrant, hasn't heard of the school or it's reputation. And even despite it's location in the SoCal Research triangle, most students basically never leave campus or interact with the broader LA community or even Pasadena.

The end result is that with no external sources of feedback to inflate your self-worth, you end up measuring yourself within the institute, which is among the smartest collections of people in the world. There's pretty much no way to come out of that measurement process without being humbled. A lot of Caltech newgrads entering into the workplace lack the "arrogance", because it's the first time they're getting feedback to help them realize that actually they're not dumb.