<p>Look at my stats and tell me what I can do to make me more appealing for Caltech.</p>
<p>User Name: sriharifez
Gender: M
Ethnicity: Sri Lankan (if don't know where Sri Lanka is, go look on a map)
College Class Year: 2008
High School: Public
High School Type: rarely (like really rarely) sends grads to top schools
Will apply for financial aid: Yes</p>
<p>Academics:</p>
<p>GPA - Unweighted: 3.98
GPA - Weighted: (school doesnt weight)
Class Rank: top 9%
Class Size: 297</p>
<p>Scores:
(Sat scores are predicted)
SAT I Math: 800
SAT I Critical Reading: 710
SAT I Writing: 740
ACT: 32
SAT II Math Level 2 (IIC): 780
AP Calc AB-5
AP Calc BC-Yet to take (prob a 5)
AP Phys C Mech and E&M-Yet to take (prob a 4 or 5)
AP Gov't-Yet to take (prob a 5)</p>
<p>Extracurriculars:
-AMC 10 2006 1st in state (score : 114)
-Wyoming State Math Contest (either first place or second place for five years)
-Baseball-Traveling team (I would consider it Varsity level)
-Tennis-JV
-Swimming-JV and V
-Track-JV
-Coaching Little League this summer
-Member of Society of Physics Students (at the university)
-Member of American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM)
-Summer Research Apprenticeship Program 2006 (a program at the University of Wyoming where I studied Computational Relativity)
-Amateur Jeweler</p>
<p>Junior classes(this year):
-AP Gov't
-Chemistry 1
-Intro to Art
-Writers Workshop (sem1) and Survey of Fiction (sem2)
University classes:
-Foundations of Geometry (Fractals and Projective Planes) (semester 1)
-Classical Mechanics (Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Mechanics, not the easy stuff) (semester 2)
-Physics 2
-AP Physics C-Mech and EM-Ind. Study
-AP Calculus BC-Ind. Study</p>
<p>Planned Senior Classes:
note: college classes are dual enroll at University of Wyoming.
-AP English Lit
-Advanced Art
College Classes:
-Calculus 3
-Applied Differential Equations
-Linear Algebra (stuff like eigenvectors and calc based matrices)
-Circuits and Systems w/Lab</p>
<p>Your college and advanced courses are great, especially given that you come from a mediocre school. Your record actually looks quite strong for Caltech given. If you write an essay emphasizing the ways you've sought to explore your passions despite limited opportunity/history of top academics at your school, that will be quite powerful I think. The only thing I can think of is try to produce some kind of scientific report or paper from your work this coming summer to show you are serious about your extracurricular research inteterests. You might even consider starting right away and aiming to submit the final results of your research to a small journal, if you professors/mentors are willing to support this.</p>
<p>Schools like Caltech tend to not just look at your grades and your classes, but on your overall "passion", id est what you've done in science and math that isn't forced, or even guided, learning. Thus, emphasizing your independent study would be the best idea in your case.</p>
<p>In my opinion, Caltech isn't one of those schools where you can write a touching story about yourself that will impress the admissions committee and gain you admittance. I'll tell you what my Calculus 3 professor told me: "Caltech doesn't do the ******** that MIT or Harvard or $Elite_School does in their admissions process. They look at your accomplishments, your intelligence, your maturity. Impressing them with your thinking skills or your passion is the best way to get in -- not 'leadership qualities' or particularly enthralling essays". This is the same teacher that has written 7 straight people into Caltech, and I'm quite trusting of his opinion. (Hopefully, I'll become 8th. We'll find out in 31 days.)</p>
<p>I pretty much just reiterated everything that Ben Golub said. That's all the advice that I, or anyone else, can give you at this point. The rest is up to you.</p>