If you had chanced me

<p>I am now to the CC community, only discovering it after I had completed the entire application and admissions cycle, and only one thing here has really surprised me: the number of people asking for 'their chances' as if anyone here has extraordinarily special insight into whether someone will get admitted.</p>

<p>That said, I was wondering, if I had asked you to chance to for Caltech (where I will be attending in the fall) what would you have said?</p>

<p>Race: Caucasian/Hispanic (Spanish decent)
Gender: Male
SAT: 2190
Math:670
CR:800
Writing:720 (essay 11)
No ACT</p>

<p>GPA:3.969 UW
AP Bio: 5
AP Eng Lang+Comp: 5
AP USH: 4
AP Physics B: 5
AP Calc AB: 5</p>

<p>I've had 3 years of Spanish, but stopped taking it after the end of Jr year, and no music.</p>

<p>Taking this year:
AP Chem
AP USGAP
AP Stats
AP Psych
AP Lit+comp
Lab Tech</p>

<p>Recommendations: Really good, except for Counselor, which is blah (they don't know us)
Essays: Pretty strong, as I am a strong writer, but written in under 6 hours with no rewrite of proofread.</p>

<p>Extracirriculars:
Captain of Knowledge Bowl Team: Took 2nd in State 2008
Captain of Math Team: Project Took 1st in state 2008
Eagle Scout
VP of Community Service honors Society
Reporter for Underground Student Newspaper</p>

<p>What do you think?</p>

<p>I forgot:</p>

<p>SAT II:
BIO-M: 760
MATH II: 760
Physics: 770</p>

<p>I would have said what I always say (except in cases where the student is obviously unfit for Caltech) which is that chances are meaningless and a waste of time. I would have also said that I would try to pull up my math II SAT score if I were you. That’s it.</p>

<p>I would second lizzardfire. Your SAT I math is a bit low, but without actually reading your essays and recs and seeing the application as a whole, the “chances” are meaningless.</p>

<p>While somewhat repeating what has been said, it would seem that your math scores are low, however, depending on the quality of your math project for math team, it could easily negate the doubts caused by your low math scores, especially since it took 1st in state.</p>

<p>I would have said you had good chances. But I would have still called it a reach.</p>

<p>Thank you for the input. I was just curious, because I see a lot of people thinking that marginal test scores are the kiss of death, and are sometimes being discouraged, when I see no reason fort them to not apply.</p>

<p>Thank you.</p>

<p>Personally, I just don’t think that an applicant “shouldn’t apply” because of a chance thread no matter what… that’s like basing your college decision on a whole bunch of strangers.</p>

<p>I’d have told you to bring up the SAT scores – though the SAT’s are complete nonsense, <em>generally</em> Caltech tends to admit students with very high numbers. But if it was clear that your SAT score was bogus, and you did something to show you’re good at math, I’m sure that’d have been taken into account.</p>