<p>@phrenze: Looking through your profile carefully, I would strongly urge you not to apply Early Action! Even though you have VERY GREAT stats, your ECs don’t show any STRONG signals of a REAL PASSION, and Caltech admissioners are VERY GOOD at pointing out types of passionate people. I guess you know the classical saying:“Let your actions SPEAK for your words!” Essays ARE IMPORTANT, yes, but essays ALONE won’t help you that much in Caltech’s admission if your ECs don’t show that type of strong passion mentioned in your essays. You may wonder why I say this? The answer is very simple: Those types of people who ONLY show their passions through essays without the significant activities to back up for their words, in my definition, are trying to FAKE their passions! Your case is almost the same though you did research, which is a good point! Therefore, you should reconsider about the option of applying Early Action. My best piece of advice for you is this: If you LOVE MATH, go out and do THINGS that PROFESSIONAL MATHEMATICIANS do! You may say “Is this guy crazy?” but if you are able to pull up your resume with significant activities(e.g: publications on journals, research contests, talks at conference, write a book and get it published to be sold internationally,etc), you stand a GREAT chance of getting into Caltech! To get a sense of what a PROFESSIONAL Mathematicians do(e.g: Terence Tao, Ngo Bao Chau, Vladimir Drinfield,etc), just go to their homepages and take a look at their CVs! This way, you can actually get a sense of what you want/need to do to “jump out of page!” Of course, don’t sweet my words if you don’t like Math, since it will take you a huge amount of work to have a resume like that of a professional mathematician. Feel free to apply this way into science too, if you think it works out well for you! Good luck:)</p>