How to boost math/science ECs for Cal Tech

<p>My 10th grade son has become interested in CalTech. He visited there recently and feels it may be a good fit. Admission is clearly very competitive and while there is still time I'm wondering what to encourage him to do now. I was reading about the American Mathematics Contest (AMC10) but his school doesn't offer it. Is that something that Caltech would care about if he could find a way to enter the competition? He is in the math club and on the science bowl team.</p>

<p>They might care if he did well at it (at least over 100 on the AMC12.)<br>
If timed tests aren’t his thing, you can also do USAMTS, where you mail in solutions to hard problems instead of taking a timed exam.</p>

<p>If you’re school won’t offer it, go ahead and see what the nearest school that offers the AMC. There are also material on the web that can help you learn how to solve problems that are seen on math contests (little tidbits of number theory, probability, etc. that often find their way onto math contests.)</p>

<p>Research is something to consider, but you could wait on that.</p>

<p>Also, if he likes taking classes, you could take a college summer school class. I think Harvard Summer School was more popular with future MIT/Caltech students than it was with future Harvard students. </p>

<p>Mandelbrot and ARML are also math contests. There is also some mathematical modeling contest–I forget it’s name. </p>

<p>Any of these things could make his application stronger for Caltech, though the top ivy leagues may not like to see summer school and won’t care much about these contests unless you are like top 50-100 in the country in the math olympics (a few rounds of qualification beyond the AMC12).</p>

<p>Thanks collegealum314. The only contest his school offers is statewide. Last year he had the hightest score in the state for students at ‘smaller schools’. His PSAT was 231 so his test scores are likely to be strong. It seems unfortunate that he should miss out on national competitions because his school doesn’t offer it.</p>

<p>BTW, are you saying top ivy leagues do not like to see summer school? Why?</p>

<p>qgroup - if your son really wants to do the AMC contests he can either ask his school to do it - it’s not expensive. Or, sometime homeschool groups offer it at a community college, or you could get together a group of kids to take the exams and ask a community college to sponsor it. </p>

<p>Don’t let your high school squelch your son’s opportunities.</p>

<p>I think most HYP adcom people would prefer some sort of community service thing that is easy fodder for an essay. Research is better than summer school, but it should result in something like a paper or Intel entry. I suspect summer school is boring to HYP adcoms because they aren’t the sort of people that would have enjoyed that. I saw a TV program where an admissions committee member bemoaned seeing “another candidate with summer school.”</p>

<p>I think it’s a mistake to let that dictate what you do, though. And there are probably ways to take summer school and still not have it hurt you in getting into HYP. </p>

<p>In general, HYP’s attitude is that anyone above a certain bar is intelligent enough for admission, and they look for other things after that (unless you have national recognition in a well-respected math/science contest.)</p>

<p>I think knowing too much about admissions in high school can be risky, though. In the long run for an technical career, you don’t want to put your foot off the gas in terms of how hard you push yourself academically.</p>

<p>Some advice if for supplementing the application:
for Princeton: engineering is in a separate admissions pool and I think admissions is more straightforward for engineering with respect to the general pool; someone who thinks they have a shot at Caltech proably would be better off applying in th engineering pool.</p>

<p>for Harvard: if you do summer school at Harvard, you might plan on doing some type of community service in Roxbury or something like that. Maybe even teach a class or something for kids. This would help at other schools too. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be a huge time investment. </p>

<p>For the other ivies, it’s easier to get in off or raw intellectual fierpower. So it’s probably best to just try to do that rather than trying to assemble a bunch of crazy EC’s.</p>

<p>For the summer after 10th grade, summer school is fine though. If he’s not ready for college summer school, he could do CTY and still have plenty of time for other stuff.</p>

<p>Thanks geomom. I think I’ll raise the issue with the school and if that doesn’t work we’ll see about taking it elsewhere. It’s a small school but fairly rigourous (graduating 47 kids this year, 7 of whom are national merit semifinalists). They may decide one math competition/year is enough but it’s worth asking.</p>

<p>Thanks collegealum314. He is actually interested in trying debate camp this summer - might that be looked upon more favorably than summer school? Probably not that helpful to Caltech but I’m so pleased he’s interested because it is truly outside his comfort zone and such a great skill to possess.</p>

<p>I’m sure that’ll be fine.</p>

<p>I took a programming class at Harvard Summer School and I would definitely recommend doing that kind of summer program.</p>

<p>I knew many people there taking Calc II or Multi, which were 4 unit courses, so you could also take another course. There were also people taking O-Chem and the likes.</p>

<p>I did find that a good majority of people there were interested in Harvard, but most people
were looking at more tech schools (in Comp Sci, Math, and Science classes), than Harvard as well.</p>

<p>If you don’t want to do that kind of program, there should be summer programs at the CC that he could take.</p>

<p>I would say that you should be able to find where the AMC12 is taken (I would take AMC12 instead of AMC10) and take it there. If you can’t find anywhere you can do it in a library if you get someone to monitor the test (not sure exactly how to approach that, but it is an option).</p>

<p>I say try to take the AMC12/AIME math tests, and then try for a summer program that really interests him (not something he does because he thinks it will look good).</p>