<p>Major mistakes:</p>
<p>Staying in the Indian curriculum! (Stupidest thing one can possibly do.)</p>
<p>Writing crazy essays. Admissions officers don't really want to hear my comparisons of geometry to a shady Manhattan detective from a B-movie.</p>
<p>Not applying to Berkeley. I realised somewhat after the fact that I might have liked it there. </p>
<p>Quitting the violin.</p>
<p>Getting that one question wrong on the SAT Math (yeah, I know how stupid that sounds, but it's annoying to have a 770 when I could've actually been in Caltech's range).</p>
<p>Not pestering my school sufficiently about transcripts (they sent them in late).</p>