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<p>I definitely think someone into MSE can get as much or more out of other involvements in high school, and that just general character traits these involvements help one build can be helpful in MSE pursuits.</p>
<p>Probably the problem is that someone who spent free time solving math problems instead of doing Model UN is showing just a clearer sign that that’s what they want to do all the time. That may be the point of Caltech – to assemble a cozy group of people who already know this is really the stuff they want to think and talk about for the next 4 years.</p>
<p>In my humble opinion, it is also dangerous for one to extrapolate that a good runner will, for instance, have the endurance to fix bugs in a CS project for hours on end. That’s endurance too, after all, but one can find running interesting, and for that matter almost any academic pursuit not so fun. So while such pursuits are good, I really discourage the practice of “discovering” students’ character traits through their activities – something many schools outside of Caltech may somewhat endorse, given the nature of their essays. I think this sort of thing leads to pretty invalid logic. And in that sense, I think Caltech plays it quite safe and well. The one and only drawback is that for some MSE interests, it is somewhat less likely that one can find a way to promisingly show the passion off in an application. But overall, this isn’t the most easily solved problem, and I think overall Caltech really does do its best.</p>