<p>Over the summer, a friends and I wrote a College Admissions Guide. It's essentially all of the things we wish we had known when we started the admissions process. I'm posting it here since it will hopefully be of use to those of you thinking about applying to Caltech (and elsewhere). Feel free to comment and ask questions :)
<a href="http://epfarms.org/%7Ehmartin/CollegeAdmissionsHowtoGuide.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://epfarms.org/~hmartin/CollegeAdmissionsHowtoGuide.pdf</a></p>
<p>I think that this is an excellent guide and wish I had read something like it in eighth grade / freshman year. I was completely unprepared for admissions into elite schools--It was only after reading CC right before senior year that I realized how screwed I was. (Thankfully, I got lucky and got into my dream school anyway). Our guidance counselors know nothing about getting into elite schools and instead prep us for state schools... :-/</p>
<p>Excellent work halfthelaw. This guide states in 10 minutes most of the admissions tidbits that took me three months to gather. The advice you give is not only first rate, but easy to understand. </p>
<p>The obvious question is, are you guys planning on publishing?</p>
<p>Lizzardfire, your counselors might be doing you a favor almost. Ours try for "elite schools", but they are kinda in the wrong direction (they focus on classes/clubs without having a goal or passion behind them).</p>
<p>You're lucky, jdhutchin, our counselors' sole purpose was to keep people from dropping out.
zeta, publishing it would be a really nifty idea, but I'm not sure if there are any feasible ways to go about that...</p>
<p>Excellent and informative :) good job and thanks for doing it.</p>
<p>May I encourage you to post this on the Parents Forum? Quite good</p>
<p>Counselors at my school did god-knows-what. You're lucky they even try to get to know you. I saw my counselor three times--once to get credit for outside classes, once for her to tell me that I needed to stay in band for a fourth year to waive vocational classes (already knew this), and a last time for her to fill out the appropriate parts of my college apps. Every time I went in to see her, she looked at me as if it was the first time she met me.</p>
<p>halfthelaw, I skimmed overy your guide, which is very nice. The only part I take issue with is the number of colleges to which one should apply. 7 is plenty. One safety, three match, three dream. Above that, you are making sure you don't get into any by not spending enough time on each. I would go so far as to say 5 should be a good max. I applied to two, and that was bad enough.</p>
<p>College Board is making millions by printing a number on a paper and sending it around the country. That's why they reccomend applying to so many.</p>
<p>Actually, they don't even do that. They just put your score on a disc with several hundred others and mail that out. It probably costs them about 99 cents total. ;-)</p>
<p>This is an old thread and the OP seems to be inactive, but I think it deserves a bump. Really excellent material.</p>