<p>Caltech conducts campus tours quite often. Should I attend, will it improve my chances of admission?</p>
<p>Attending a campus tour will not improve your chances of admission.</p>
<p>Uhhh, the reason to go on a campus tour would not be to improve your chances of admission. It would be to evaluate the school as the place you're going to spend the next four (approximately) years at. </p>
<p>So to answer your first question, if you are considering Caltech seriously: Yes.
To answer your second question: No.</p>
<p>edit: zoogies! :P</p>
<p>but don't these colleges consider demonstrated interest?</p>
<p>You parents being able to afford you visiting the school doesn't necessarily qualify as "demonstrated interest." I visited one school prior to applying, and that was only to walk around campus a little bit while my parents were dropping my brother off at his school a few miles away.</p>
<p>could you chance me?</p>
<p>SAT 1: CR-600, M-790, W-710
SAT 2: M-800, Chem-800</p>
<p>ranked 1 in school, chesschamp, guitar, swimming.</p>
<p>summer research in number theory. applying without asking for financial aid.</p>
<p>Applying for financial aid will not affect your chances of admission. Really. If there's any chance you'd get aid, apply for it.</p>
<p>applying for financial aid, being international significantly reduces chances of admission.</p>
<p>Fair enough, that's true. Asking for financial aid would hurt your chances for admission (though if you actually need it, you should still apply for it anyway. There's no point in getting in if you can't actually afford to go). You didn't mention that you were international before though. However, visiting Caltech's campus and taking a tour will not improve your chances of admission.</p>
<p>If you can afford the trip, it would be good to see Caltech before being a student. That said, it may be better to wait until you've actually been admitted, and not risk a long trip for nothing. Even if it did help with admission, I'd really like to think that you have better things to do with your time than travel to other countries in order to attend college tours in the hopes of improving your chances.
We can't chance you based on the information you provided - there is nothing spectacular, and nothing obviously disqualifying. A piece of advice though: guitar and swimming mean nothing without further explanation. In your application you need to say something intelligent about your hobbies in order for it to make a difference.</p>
<p>Given that the estimated cost of attendance for next year's class is over $49,000, which translates to ~25,000 British pounds, ~31,500 Euros, 5.3e+6 yen, 300,000 yuan, or 2.e+6 Indian rupees, I don't think it is particularly sensible to apply without asking for financial aid, even if it would help your 'chances' -- unless you are in the income bracket that really does not need it (which is statistically unlikely), getting into a school that would cause you to incur that much debt (quadrupled) seems non-useful.</p>
<p>I'm really not sure what anyone can say about your chances. Where your stats fit in can easily be determined from the common data sets; the amount of information you provide about your awards and activities is small enough that the only opinion available is 'you don't express yourself fully'.</p>
<p>isn't applying without aid better than getting rejected?</p>
<p>maybe i can apply for scholarships later and earn some cash working.</p>
<p>I know quite a bit of math, so if you give me more technical details about your summer research, I can tell you what I think of it.</p>
<p>number theory project covering Congruences, Quadratic Reciprocity and quadratic Forms.</p>
<p>i think you might have pretty good stats, but you have to also convey your personality and, i hope, your humor</p>
<p>conveying humor on my app....may not be a good idea.</p>
<p>As long as your humor is not solely dead baby jokes you should be fine conveying it...</p>