<p>nothing for me either
i live in Alberta, Canada..
I should have received it by now if I were accepted,r ight?
sigh...staying hopeful for one more day...</p>
<p>
[quote]
I looked in and found an envelope and my heart sank. But I looked in and found that it was actually my rejection letter from MIT. A rejection letter was never so pleasing as that one.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>ROFL! :D</p>
<p>And yeah, nobody posting a rejection doesn't mean nobody has gotten one :P</p>
<p>What's really aggravating is another girl at my son's school got her acceptence yesterday. So where is my son's letter? GRRRRR.</p>
<p>Mother-of-Perl
[quote]
We heard a rumor last night that another student at her school received a rejection letter by regular mail, but I can't confirm that.
[/quote]
That's what's freaking me out too. Two days later seems ominous.</p>
<p>I can only imagine how hard it is waiting for those of you that haven't heard from Caltech. I wonder since there seem to be so many waiting to hear perhaps there was some mistake in the mailroom at Caltech. It happened last year at MIT (I don't remember if it was during the EA round or during the regular admit round) but many letters did not leave the mail room when they were suppose to. I don't remember the details but stacks of letters to applicants sat in the mail room for several days. It was only after lots of calls to the admissions office from students who had not received any letter did the admissions office check with the mail room to find letters had not made it into the hands of the USPS.<br>
Another thought - wasn't there a big storm that caused flight delays the end of last week? Maybe the mail got stuck somewhere?<br>
Best of luck to all waiting & congrats to those who have received acceptances!</p>
<p>I think if they ever make a mistake like that, they should apologize for the stress caused with a letter of acceptance to Caltech. I'd certainly forgive them!</p>
<p>[ size=+1][ color=Pink][ b]Decision: Accepted[ /b][ /color][ /size]</p>
<p>[ b]Stats:[ /b][ list]
[ *] SAT: CR:770 M:800 W:690 (6 Essay.. Yuck)
[ *] SAT IIs: BioE/USH 790 M2C 800
[ *] GPA: 3.96 UW
[ *] Rank: ~3/400
[ *] AP/IB scores: (5s) Env Sci, WH, Stat, Bio, Human Geo., Psych, (4) USH,(3s) Eng, Spanish Lang.
[ *] AMC12/AIME/USAMO: Nope
[ *] Research: None
[ *] Courseload: Hardest
[ *] Other stats:</p>
<p>[ /list][ b]Subjective:[ /b][ list]
[ *] Essays: Pretty good, I felt liked I showed my interest in science and math well, but I am a bad a writer.
[ *] Recommendations: Probably average, perhaps below average my teachers at the time had known me for maybe 3-4 months.(Certainly not "One of the best in all my 40 years of teaching" types of recs)
[ *] Hook (if any): I'm pretty damn good at Halo, and I do alot of independent reading/research/tinkering.</p>
<p>[ /list][ b]Location/Person:[ /b][ list]
[ *] State or Country: FL
[ *] School Type: Uncompetitive Public, rarely sends people to top ten schools.
[ *] Ethnicity: Dark Elf
[ *] Gender: Man
[ *] Major strength/weakness: SATs, Lack of Research/Awards, Bad ECs, Good essay</p>
<p>[ /list][ b]Other Factors:[ /b]
[ *] Extracurriculars listed on app: Robotics, Reading, Minor School Clubs, Red Cross, Tennis, Programming.
[ *] Summer Activities: Pwning Noobs at Halo. (nothing really)
[ *] Why I think I was accepted/denied: Not sure, I mean I really didn't stand out academically or through extracurriculars; I guess it was probably my Recs/Essay/Responses to Questions that did the trick.
[ *] What's your favourite flavor of pie? Apple Pie .. with Ice Cream
[ *] Other thoughts: Getting into Caltech was really unexpected for me, after getting rejected from MIT I thought I'd be an auto reject from Caltech. I'm still waiting to hear from other colleges, but Caltech is probably where I'm going =p.</p>
<p>I was waitlisted. Like some1 said before, ill have to wait for other colleges before confirming a place on that list.</p>
<p>Zoogies: "And yeah, nobody posting a rejection doesn't mean nobody has gotten one :P"</p>
<p>Out of the 10 people I've heard from at my school: 2 acceptances, 7 waitlisted, 1 rejected.
They all arrived on the same day.</p>
<p>But the amusing thing was the one rejected had the highest unweighted gpa out of all of us. 4.0. and had higher SATs (2300's) than most of the accepted and waitlisted kids. I guess that goes to show Caltech isn't just about numbers. :-)</p>
<p>But I'm still not sure why the data plots like a bell curve.</p>
<p>wow someone in Toronto already got his
I'm in Toronto too... but I guess I'm rejected
lol</p>
<p>Years ago - perhaps back in the 1950s, there was an amusing little short story in one of the Science Fiction pulps that I came across in a compendium.</p>
<p>Core thesis: The further the mail had to go, the faster it went. Mail across town took forever (a week), mail across country went much faster (days). So being good scientist types, they started measuring this, and discovered that they could force routing points that made the mail go faster, like send it to the space station in LEO and it came back faster across town than if it just went went to the local mail sorting facility. Then they routed it to Mars and it came back faster than if it went across the country. Then they shipped it to Pluto (it was still a planet then) and it came back before it was sent! (This was all pre-Feynman).</p>
<p>So - maybe some of the folks still hanging out waiting for their mail are got routed through the local POs. And maybe Caltech found some magic way to route the local stuff through Pluto, since Prof. Brown got that poor little body knocked off the planet list. Maybe they have some insane control over the way the mail gets routed. </p>
<p>Or maybe - just maybe - all these storms and random events have caused random delays all through the USPS system. It's no fun to wait. So - just think of your mail going R/T to Pluto - does that help? Hang in there!</p>
<p>Decision: Accepted !!!</p>
<p>SAT: 2220 (770 math) - that was a retake (I got 2010 with 640 math the first time).
SATII's: 800,800 for MathII & Phy. But... I got 660 in chem.
Took no AP tests (!), but have two AP classes (AP Calc & AP Eng Lit). However I also have a fairly heavy load at a college (including multivariable calc), and got an excellent rec from one of my professors.</p>
<p>EC's on app: Research, some science fairs (nothing national though), watching Star Trek. I sent a paper with the app.</p>
<p>Why was I admitted? God knows. I don't think I have any really big "hooks" at all so I guess it was just continuous effort & interest in math/science. Also my essay was about how, before I even took AP Calc, I solved div(v)=0 for water coming out of a faucet just to see whether the result would be the same as that given by vA=const. I'm not very well-rounded (which might be why MIT rejected me).</p>
<p>I hope this isn't a repeat of MIT EA back in 2005.</p>
<br>
<p>I hope this isn't a repeat of MIT EA back in 2005.</p>
<br>
<p>What happened in 2005?</p>
<p>I think he's referring to where they left some decisions unsent in a room and didn't get around to sending them until they got tons of calls telling them about it. In any case, we can't call until Friday, so this is going to be a long wait if such a thing really occurred. Why must I always have such bad luck? <em>sulk</em></p>
<p>Actually, they did send them all. Except the post office did something funny and processing the tubes (acceptances) on Saturday and everything else Monday. And then there was a blizzard in NE. So all the tubes made it out on time, but the deferrals/rejections took a while to get delivered.</p>
<p>Well, since there have been people who've been put on the waitlist or rejected already, I'd say that's out of the question. I would think that Caltech would send everything at the same time, too. The website says so, at least.</p>
<p>I haven't seen any rejects.</p>
<p>And: "Out of the 10 people I've heard from at my school: 2 acceptances, 7 waitlisted, 1 rejected.
They all arrived on the same day."</p>
<p>And why would they mail waitlists and rejections differently?</p>
<p>They wouldn't, it just sometimes happens, since they would be grouped in different piles. I'm sure MIT didn't plan to send out different letters at different times, it just happened.</p>
<p>WAITLISTED</p>
<p>SAT M 750 CR 580 W 730 = 2050 (got CR 580 both times I took the test)
SAT II M-IIC 800 Physics 750 Chemistry 740
AP's
10th grade - Chem 3
11th grade - Calc BC; Physics B - 5, 5
12th grade - Psycho, Stat, MacroEconom, CompSci A; Physics C self-study
AMC/AIME - 104/3 -> nothing to brag about</p>
<p>School - Public, crappy and crowded. GPA: 98-99. Rank? Probably around top 20 - I was never interested in that kind of stuff.</p>
<p>EC's
Random research at a local college (with pay, however) as sophmore -> junior
Summer Science Program as junior -> senior</p>
<p>Play Flute/Piano for 10 years (not that I am good at it, but enough to get first chair in concert band)
Varsity Volleyball</p>
<p>Other stuff like chess, philosophy, tutoring, etc. - didn't really report that</p>
<p>Hooks
Built a working telescope from trash from NYC streets (sewer pipe, broken microscope, part of a camera, etc)
Came to the US less than 3 years ago from Moldova, with no English -> not a big deal</p>
<p>Thoughts
Well, obviously my English SAT is too low, but I don't think it was the only reason.
I believe AdComs wanted something more tangible from me, like some award, some proof behind this pile of words (because I did exceed the word limit for every essay there was). </p>
<p>Thoughts/Comments
If you can, don't go over the limit by a lot :) and, most importantly, be yourself on application (I still don't know if it's the best thing to do - one can easily make up a good story, and get what they want, but I don't think it's a nice way to do it, especially if you plan to go into science).</p>
<p>Feelings When I did not receive anything yesterday, I was expecting to find a small envelope in the mailbox - so it was not a really big disappointment, - the big disappointment was yesterday =)</p>
<p>In any case, congrats to all accepted, good luck to all waitlisted, and "cheer up!" to all rejected.</p>