<p>I know that we should provide information about new activities and accomplishments in our waitlist letter. Do you think it is alright to provide information about your favorite classes and summer plans in your letter to let them get a better sense of who you are? Do you think I could explain or show a minor mathematical formula I developed (nothing revolutionary or even that advance) in the letter? Also how long should our letter be? At the rate I am writing, it may end up being like 4 pages single spaced, 12 font. Is that too much to expect an admissions officer to read? Thank you very much for any advice you can provide.</p>
<p>So...
I think you're misinterpreting the whole "update" idea.
When I was on the waitlist, I did include a little bit of "why Caltech is a fit for me" stuff, but not too much. Truth be told, admissions got the best idea of who you are by your application.
Senior year is a special time-in a way the final culmination of all your high school effort. For me, I was actually kind of a lamo until close to the end of senior year when I started getting nominated for and winning a bunch of awards.
The "update" has 2 real purposes:
1) indicates you are "interested" (in other words, you would prolly most definitely attend Tech if accepted)
2) gives an idea of where you stand in terms of other applicants on the waitlist</p>
<p>1) is because a huge number of people that are "smart" enough to get waitlisted at Caltech probably got accepted at a pretty amazing other place, so they just decide to enroll there rather than get of the waitlist
and 2) Being on the waitlist in a way kind of put you neck and neck with a bunch of other students. If you (student a) wins a huge competition in the waitlist weeks while student b goes snowboarding, that will catch admissions' attention.</p>
<p>And attention is important (I got attention by meeting with the admissions director for 45 minutes and giving the admissions office a pretty awesome idea of who I was in a personal sense, because they value that as well [at least to an extent :)])</p>
<p>Yeah that's just an idea.</p>
<p>It is definitely a good idea to show Caltech AdCom how interested you are in attending this school. If you think you've missed something on your application, and feel they don't get the full picture of who you are, a short composition might be a good idea, but 4 pages....single-spaced....I think it might be pushing it waaaaaay to far.</p>