<p>Hey,
I'm a current Junior who really wants to attend Caltech for college. I went on the campus tour, really appreciate the honor code and the house system, but then came to the realization upon listening to the admissions talk that I haven't really done any activities directly related to math, science, or engineering as a student. The problem is that I'm really passionate about those things in my free time, yet I haven't joined any activities at school related to them. I'm involved in Band, Peer Tutoring, and Debate. The style of debate I participate in is focused on logical argumentation and philosophy - I've used the skills I've learned from that to contribute to a nonprofit organization centering around a specific political issue that we've debated about (I'm not going to go into too much detail here as I don't want to lose my anonymity, but it's somewhat impressive.) Suffice to say, I have a lot of knowledge about philosophy and am interested in "deconstructing" familiar concepts, ideas, and institutions, and exploring how they tick.</p>
<p>The reason I picked these activities was that they appealed to me the most. Our school has some other activities related to math and science, but that are not very stimulating. We have a math club that participates in various competitions, but I never really got into math before I started taking calculus. Even so, the math that they use is very low-level and isn't very fun. We also have a robotics club that uses lego robotics to goof around and does not compete with other schools. There's nothing that they do that I couldn't do in my own free time.</p>
<p>So yeah, I feel like I'm really screwed here, especially since I've missed the deadline for a lot of summer internships. Should I continue doing what I'm interested in and just say that I think enough like a math and science student on the application, desperately try to find something else math/science related to participate in, or give up entirely?</p>
<p>In particular, I have a pretty solid understanding/interest in computers and electronics. I built my own computer, and when my laptop cable broke, I was able to solder it rather than buying a new one. I also modded my laptop with the help of a linux distro to make it boot in about half the time of the store model. That’s what I can recall off the top of my head. Problem is, those feats aren’t as impressive as my humanities ones.</p>
<p>Oh man, I suggest trying something new. I know guys that go to CCs that had more experience than you when they were in middle school. I was building computers when I was 9 for pete’s sake. IMHO, to a nerd, those are not very impressive feats. A guy at CC wrote his own programming language and assembler when he was in highschool… I am impressed by that.</p>
<p>I would urge you to not to do things you aren’t interested in, in order to gain admission to Caltech. If you aren’t interested in them, but the admissions committee thinks they’re important, that’s likely an indication that you will be asked to do things at Caltech which also don’t interest you. You don’t need to do school-sponsored math/science things - if you have something more interesting to do in your spare time, by all means; go for it, but try to do something tangible. The house system, and the honor code are both important parts of being at Caltech, but you can love those features to death, and still be unhappy here if you don’t like spending most of your working time thinking about math/science.<br>
David - I think if you read carefully, you will find that nobody is asking you to be impressed.</p>