<p>So, caltech just sent a gloriously shiny poster about Tech activities, and there was a large range of extracurrics. Since Caltech is extremely rigorous and the courses are time-consuming, how many activities does the average Techer participate in? How feasible is it to balance activities and grades for an intelligent, non-prodigy? [aka <em>not</em> ben golub =P]
Also, I was really surprised to see cheerleading on the list. I'm a varsity cheerleading for fall+winter, and it takes up a healthy chunk of time. For the Caltech app, should I mention it, or would it be viewed as fluffy and not serious enough? Btw, how is the caltech squad? The website seems to have died.</p>
<p>Second, I know people who keep up a 3.0 GPA and play a sport two seasons a year... maintaining more than one big activity is hard. Some people do two medium-sized ones.</p>
<p>I think Caltech cheerleading may not be alive at present, but don't take my word for it. Just don't get your hopes up :-)</p>
<p>I'd mention the cheerleading on your app. It shows variety and spunk. We know you're good at science if your grades etc. show it, so cheerleading won't make you look fluffy.</p>
<p>Yeah, Caltech cheer squad has died out. If you're interested in starting it up again, I can get you in touch with the driving force behind the last incarnation. He ended up going on to law school at UVA, just finished.</p>
<p>To add some data for your average, I did band (2.5 hours/week), orchestra (3 hours/week), and student government (varied widely between maybe 2 and 10+ hours/week). There were various miscellaneous things like playing percussion for choir concerts, the odd Interhouse basketball game, actually practicing my instrument outside of band and orchestra (ha!) and so on, but those probably averaged to less time per week than the other activites.</p>
<p>I seemed slightly busier in terms of "organized" extracurricular activities than most of my friends but almost everyone I knew had something they devote substantial time to outside of the classroom, whether that was a sport, an instrument, hiking with the Y, or whatever.</p>
<p>I did orchestra (3 hrs/wk), capoeira (1 hr/wk), and frisbee (4-5 hrs/wk) at one point, but the activities that I've done have varied between terms.</p>
<p>no more capoeira! we should replace it with parkour, I did orchestra too, and I did a lot of bumming around. procrastinating took up most of my time.</p>
<p>I did student government, which averaged 2 hours per week, and I sat on the Board of Control which ranged from 0 to 40 hours per week. (No, that's not a typo.)</p>
<p>
[quote]
"we should replace it with parkour"[\quote]
lol, when I was at the preview day, I saw this awesome tree/balcony run. Seriously, are there many traceurs at Caltech?</p>
<p>maybe...... 3 or 4 in training? We just get together every once in awhile and mess around really, or longboard, I wouldn't call us traceurs yet...</p>
<p>I've been replacing capoeira with breaking. Trying to learn flares.</p>
<p>I'm not sure there's any spots that are that great for parkour. The CSS staircase is fun to climb and there's some railings by the library for vaulting and stuff.</p>
<p>It's awesome that you guys have balanced a pretty wide range of activities [Brazilian martial art! =D] with school. I was worried that the rigor of Caltech academics killed one's spare time.</p>