上次請教申請大學之道，大家告訴我申請州大，於是我們申請了UIUC，結果被拒了。
大家說，我娃適合Caltech，而且Caltech認USAMO，USACO，，，於是我們趕緊報了Caltech
報上AMC12, AIME, USAMO，USAxO 成績，還有AP，SAT等等上去，被Caltech斥責：為公平起見，所有這些成績都被扔紙簍裏了，不要再寄了！
打電話問，哪你們怎麽選招啊？ 答：holistic！
問：成績都不看，怎麽holistic？答：看GPA，看Essay
Caltech雖然很小，招的很少，但是近三年在本校招了6個，每年2個。娃的GPA奇高，於是信心滿滿。
剛剛開箱驗貨一看，又是鐵麵冷拒。難道Essay太差了？
打開common app，我看了一下娃的Essay，覺得比我寫的好多了。怎麽當年連我都收的學校，偏偏不收我娃呢？既然Caltech不喜歡，就給大家看看吧
Essay 1 - Tell us about a time or experience in which you encountered failure. (250 words maximum)
When considering failure it’s important to consider context: specifically, ask what’s the cost of failure and what’s the probability of failure. How I react to failure depends on these two parameters.
I encountered type-I failure in my research on COVID-modeling that had been stagnant for 3 months. I researched various epidemiology models to predict the spread of COVID throughout various countries: SIR, statistical models,…but none satisfactorily predicted the trend. These were “intelligent failures”, with low cost and high probability. My strategy was staying calm, motivated, and analytically sharp, communicating with other scientists, because each new attempt had more experience and ideas. By continuing to make failures. I learned gradually and gained concrete every attempt until I finally developed a successful fractional calculus model to predict the trend.
Fatal failures are costly and unrecoverable, sometimes even inevitable. I encountered such a failure after graduating from an art middle-school: I was rejected by all three high-schools I had applied to. I had no school to attend. In response to this fatal unrecoverable failure, I re-applied to my public feeder immediately to control further damages. I took 8 APs and won many national competitions(USAMO/USACO) during freshman and sophomore. In junior I was invited to transfer back into the best school which rejected me at my first application. My junior grade GPA at this best school in my state was 4.923 out of 5.0 which set a new historical school record. I didn’t seek this failure, but I worked hard to circumvent its effects.
