dubious.biz(ness)

I should note (for blogvertizement purposes) my fellow dubious inhabitant’s blog, spooky sez hi.

Hopefully, this is as calm as it will get. I have a million things to do, but unfortunately, they’re all in a holding pattern right now, to be done later or waiting on something. Mainly I am studying. Studying for the SAT, Calculus II, my (hopeful) interview, and trying to brush up my maths skills generally. Also trying to nail down a personal statement but I have a bit of block on that one, as the statements that I’ve seen that are exceptional to me are mainly exceptional because of the geniuses who wrote them, not the genius in them. In general it seems to be a mixed bag of “I’m so awesome.”

Studying has taken the form of some strategy review for the SAT as well as some refresher on the general structure. As of course I’m sure you know, the College Board doesn’t want you to be able to “study” for the SAT, so mainly just remembering the way the questions are. I got a 700 on verbal practice test, which is exactly the same as I got 5 years ago taking the test… Hopefully I will be able to get the mathmatics section into the 700’s, which would be an improvement on the previous year’s testing. Possibly my secret weapon (the TI-86) can be of service.

For Calculus II, I started by trying to use CoW, a web-based calculus course, however it is so poor at instruction and so heavy on questions that I am loath to link to it. It’s not even good for a refresher. Particularly since it demands you rememorize the stupid trig crap that falls so easily out of one’s head. If I needed to express csc 2x in terms of tan…. wait, no one ever needs to do that. That’s not even necessary for calc, nor is the pointless memorization of the various integrations and derrivations of trig functions, and I am a physics buff. Anyway, I’m using this ancient textbook called Calculus and its Applications, which was published before I was born. Fortunately math is not exactly a lively area of excitement and it’s reasonably well backed with examples so I don’t need an instructor.

As for my interview, other than the above, I’m trying to beef up my theoradical computer science knowledge by reading a few books that I saw somewhere on the reading list for incoming CS majors. Right now I’m in The Emperor’s New Mind by Roger Penrose. Penrose is probably best known for his tilings, which are tessalations of two tiles which show beautiful local symmetries but no global symmetries. Not suprisingly, Penrose is seeks to show how and why algorithms (and therefore their actors, computers) can only show some of the known maths, and can never fully duplication consciousness. Quite a tall order, but if anyone is up to it, it’s Penrose. It’s also one of the only places outside of the halls of University that one can get a good understand of what’s been going on in Physics and Mathematics for the past 200 or so years, since so much of it is beyond the understanding of the typical man-on-the-street. I must say that it will probably require me to reread the first half after completing it because the math gets very heavy very fast with discussions of set theory and higher dimensional math, and toward the end gets very theoradical with discussions of quantum physics.

I find quantum physics to be relaxing with its proclivity for probabilities and ambiguities. Set theory on the other hand requires one to consider the difference between the infinite number of real numbers, and the infinite number of natural numbers (the infinite number of natural numbers being infinite but logically fewer than that of real numbers which are the same as the number of complex numbers… curious indeed). It reminds me of playground discussions we had about “Infinity Plus One” and “Infinity Times Two” which of course is always still infinity, as I would try to explain to my fellow classmates. However, Aleph One is quite an order of magnitude greater. If only I had known then what I know now.

It is not officially application season. Applications can be sent in from 1 Sep to 15 Oct for Cambridge/Oxford applicants and who knows when for everyone else, because the early date is all that matters for me. 15 October is coming fast already, as things have accelerated at work and I am trying to keep both feet in to make sure everyone understands that even though I have plans, I am not leaving just yet.

I wanted to do most of the application work over the long labor day weekend. I believe I have a significant stable at the Personal Statement, the rest of the easy generic stuff (First Name, Last Name, etc) is done. I need my referral, and I feel that referrals are very very important, and particularly so for me because I have been out of school for a while. I had been focusing on my UCAS application but I decided (on sunday night) to take a look at the Cambridge application, which is separate and in addition to the UCAS app.

After the first look I thought it was incredibly redundant, because it contains nearly exactly the same information as the UCAS application. On second glance unfortunately the UCAS application and Cambridge application differ just enough to be annoying. For example, a passport style picture. Very necessary for admission into a college. An extra 4 lines for your personal statement. What in the world would you need 4 extra lines for in your personal statement? I already had to fit a novel into 47 lines for my UCAS application! A well-written statement should leave nothing out, and if you leave nothing out, why the extra room? Am I supposed to write an empassioned haiku about Cambridge? Put in a perl one-liner? In fact, I think that Cambridge could request such ridiculous items in their application and everyone would submit them because it’s Cambridge. I did check through the entire thing and there were no “favorite color” or “best movie ever” questions, so I’m pretty sure they take it seriously.

Finally, and this was the kicker for me. I must have a second reference, only for my Cambridge app. Because I am a mature student. Argh! As if a single wildcard out of my control isn’t enough, now I have TWO! And a copy of my resume written without the crap. And it has to be prepared by 1 Oct to be in their hands by 15 Oct. Great. Fortunately, I only need one referral letter, which is nice because my referral letter will be probably one of the most important things I submit. My eyes are on the interview…

Looking at my UCAS and the lovely 6 spaces that I have to fill out it seems like a shame not to fill them all out. I think I may consider putting Imperial and UCL (or perhaps Southampton) on them just to fill them in. I know I said Imperial was too American, but blank spaces were made to be filled, no?

I would strongly recommend to anyone considering this to get in contact with all Unis you are interested in as soon as possible. They will not give you any amazing insight into their process or themselves, but they can go miles in quieting your concerns about what-ifs (other that those “will I get accepted” and “will I be able to make it though” what ifs). I’ve contacted each of the schools I am interested in attending, and thus far have gotten favorable results from each except York which gave me an auto-response and then hasn’t returned my response to the auto response. Perhaps I am contacting the wrong address though.

For all those concerned (like my parents) their responses to me were:

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I’ve been trying to go in reverse order of what to do because I don’t want to forget, but I think it’s time I put in something about where I am at in the process, at the fine time of 3AM in the morning. I have gotten bored with my new HP iPaq h6315, and all of it’s wireless goodness, so it’s high tempo for me to start writing in here after 1 week hiatus.

I personally have chosen (for the time being) 3 schools in England: Cambridge, Edinburgh, and York. Why? Cambridge is certainly a great school, Edinburgh is the oxbridge of the north, and York is uhh, in the middle (hahaha). Honestly, having never been there and having to cast my net before I actually do go to any of them, I’m going on reputation alone.

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