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A2A: I can't emphasize enough what others have mentioned about making sure Tech is right for you. I'm a current Senior, and quite honestly the reason I'm still here is through stubbornness: many people similar to me would have quit by now. I went to a sub-par public school which was so easy for me it was sad, but it in no way prepared me for Tech. I was never encouraged to do research and read outside of school, so I didn't really know that it was an option.I remember reading a description of Caltech about 2 years ago that really resonated with me and my experiences. And look I found it! I highly recommend that you read it, because it's the most accurate description of Caltech that I've read.Michael Woods' answer to Colleges and Universities: What does it feel like to attend a world-renowned university?In addition, make it an absolute priority to attend prefrosh weekend if you do get in. It's critical to get a flavor of the campus before deciding to attend. I remember touring UC Berkeley with some family alumni, and I HATED it. I just got the worst vibe from the school. I don't know how to describe it, but I immediately knew I would not enjoy the school. I didn't even apply. If I had applied there, I'm sure I would have been accepted, and if I hadn't gotten into my other top schools, I probably would have attended and immediately hated it. While you're on campus for PFW, make sure to do more than just the fun social activities. Have late night talks with your host: they're there to answer your questions about Caltech. Go to a few lectures in subject areas you're interested in, and ask for recommendations for both good and bad lecturers so you get the whole spectrum of how good professors are at instructing. Hang out with some upperclassmen as they work on a difficult problem set. Experience the /real/ Tech first hand, instead of just the fluffy stuff on the surface they show you for the pre-planned events for PFW. (Don't bother with the seminars: I never really found them useful, it's far more useful to do the other things I suggested.) It's good to make friends with other prefrosh, but don't hang out with them exclusively. The upperclassmen on campus are your greatest resource for figuring out if Caltech is right for you.As far as what will get you in: I got into Caltech and Princeton, but not MIT, Harvard, or Yale. So here's a rough profile of my application, since I didn't really have that extra "show my interest in math/science by doing all of the outside learning." My senior year, I took 7 AP classes (my school didn't have the IB program), went to the local college to pursue a more advanced Japanese class when they cancelled that after my Sophomore year, and started my own FIRST robotics team from the ground up, doing every bit of administration and fundraising on my own (we won rookie inspiration). I did JV sports for two years until the team benched me for the last game for attending an AP chem review session instead of attending practice and I decided I didn't want to be part of a team like that. I was president of the school mathletes club for my last two years. While a part of that club, I became the first female from my school to score the highest (at my school) on the annual AMC. I was valedictorian, and got the highest test scores at my school (senior awards night was really embarrassing; they did highest PSAT score, highest SAT score, highest SAT subject scores, highest gpa, most AP classes taken, highest AP test score average, and a special award in math all in a row, made me walk back and forth every time). My Junior year, I wanted to skip AB calculus and go straight to BC, but not enough people were interested in it so they weren't going to offer it. I fought with the school and eventually got a zero period class taught by a student teacher to go through. For summer work, I used to work for my mother at her mortgage/real estate businesses, and the summer before my senior year I did an internship at a vacuum chamber & valve manufacturing company and learned some CAD design, and designed a cleanroom they were adding to the company. incidentally, all the work that I did was for the order placed for the expansion of LIGO, a Caltech project. Then a bunch of minor awards and things, scholarships, etc, but those would be too long and unnecessary to list.My reason for listing all of these things isn't to brag. In fact, it's pretty average for a Caltech student, so it's not like my peers would be overly impressed with it anyways. My point is this: while most of the things I listed are pretty necessary* to get in, there were only three "special" or "remarkable" things on my application:First (and primarily) starting my own robotics team through FIRST. That accomplishment communicates several things about me. If I'm interested in something, I take the initiative to to it. I'm a leader. I'm able to make compelling arguments to superiors with funding abilities as to why they should sponsor my team. I have vast organizational abilities to be able to coordinate both the administrative side of the team and also the building and mechanical aspects of the robot. (We actually successfully used a scissor lift that wasn't crappy: only to find out later that scissor lifts are taboo in FIRST because they're so difficult to get right.) I was able to communicate effectively with adults not as a child, but as an adult myself, and earn their respect and trust enough to be willing to donate vast amounts of time to my cause.Second, the BC Calculus class I got to go through was wonderful for showing my dedication to my education and not being satisfied with being held back because of what the school offered. (Similarly in middle school I commuted to the high school nearby to take Geometry since my school didn't offer it.)Third (and perhaps the least influential of these things) was my engineering internship. While it wasn't that glamorous by any means, and I didn't do /all/ that much, I did learn some valuable modeling skills and planning skills, and of course dropping the LIGO name in my essays had to help. While in actuality I stumbled into this internship because my dad worked at the company on the business side and my step-family is involved in ownership, it's one of those things that if you spin it right it looks really good on an application. This is the one thing that probably most showed my initiative to learn things about math/science outside of school.I give specific examples because hopefully that helps you see how you can demonstrate the things that admissions is looking for, even if you're not building a nuclear reactor in your garage and publishing a book about it in high school. (Yes, somebody did this.)You application essays are also just as important. You need to be able to write well in a compelling, conversational (yet not informal) manner and be able to tell a STORY about yourself, while still bringing up your accomplishments and the things you have learned. One of my essays was about my FIRST team, another was about the LIGO internship. Another that probably showed that my mind was suited to Caltech was a short answer talking about how much I loved patterns, and another about all of the cool/showy applications of high school chemistry incorporated into a halloween demo. One of the best pieces of advice I've heard for college applications is that it doesn't necessarily matter precisely what you want to do. Even if you have no idea yet, colleges want to see you driven towards a specific goal. So the advice is "pick a direction and write to it" even if you're not sure about it. I wrote an essay about my desire to help research to build a better battery, thereby integrating it into solar energy (which isn't very easy to store for night use). Despite groups on Caltech's campus that do indeed actually work on batteries, I haven't pursued this at all. I've done different things (still related to solar energy since that remains my passion), but they're not going to get mad at you if you don't stick to what you write in your applications.That's most of what I have to say, but let me add that it worries me that you imply that you could get better grades if you tried harder. While Caltech certainly does have students who didn't get awesome grades in high school because they were bored, you have to have an amazing set of extracurriculars and test scores to back that up if you want that to fly. Ultimately, if you're not willing to work hard, Caltech isn't right for you. Many people end up graduating bitter, because if they had gone to a different school they would have gotten straight A's with relatively little effort, and had much more time to pursue their own interests and projects. Are you willing to go through 4 years of hell only to graduate with a lower GPA, have people confuse your degree with one from CalPoly, and as others have mentioned, potentially develop lifetime psychological problems? If the research and the challenge and the connections you will make are worth that to you, then go for it. If that sounds scary and you'd rather not, you might want to reconsider Caltech in the first place.

In lieu of many seemingly unrelated INFJ questions such as the following, I am going to connect all the dots with one analogyAre INFJ narcissistic people?Why does the INFJ personality type seem to have low energy levels?Can you as an INFJ distinguish between true INFJs and those who think they are, but aren't?What is the most INFJish thing a person does? How do you guess if someone has an INFJ personality type?What is one thing that an INFJ will doorslam you quickly for?It occured to me to answer this because to my mind when I think about how I am like, I immediately see a periodic table in my mind’s eye and I am so very like the element LITHIUM.Despite fragile appearances I am highly conductive, highly reactive, highly applicable in lots of situations—even in nuclear weapons—but I need to be discovered as lithium in its elemental form. Lithium doesn't occur free in nature. I won’t be just sitting around wearing INFJ-pride.With electrons I do have to give, I give up readily (shirt off my back tendency) but the tricky thing is, lithium doesn’t have that many orbitals to fill. To be in my inner circle, one has to coincide with an unspoken vacancy. Otherwise I will be content and stabilized with my existing covalent bond and remain loyal and invested in sharing myself on deeper and deeper levels.The problem is, it often isn’t the right person filling our one open spot. For reasons inexplicable to me, a non-trivial number of strangers describe my intersection with their lives in exalted otherworldly salvation terms, as if their lives have been graced by divine intervention or that an angel in human form miraculously appeared. On my end, I just follow through some hunches and ordinary inner guidance “bring x, and take the other route” but to others, the specific item I bring, or my crossing their paths at that exact moment, or saying the words that come to me… tends to reveal much greater meaning and result in an audible gasp of recognition. Maybe it looks a lot like the “love-bombing,” “mirroring” and “grooming” of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, so one might be confused by concepts, but I find that more often than not, the “discard” will get to keep our precious electron that we gave.Lithium also has one of the lowest melting point (180º C) for a metal and highest boiling points (1330º C) for a metal, even though it remains highly reactive. To me, it parallels how the INFJ heart is easily touched and softened by the most mundane of things, but to get us to truly go ballistic takes a lot of heat and a lot of pressure, but contrast this with NPD, which is characterized by gross lack of empathy and does not need much friction to perceive things as a “narcissistic injury” to justify inflicting mass damage to their surrounding relationships.I further distinguish the high reactivity from the high boiling point as this: like NPDs, INFJs may be prone to neurosis, low self-valuation and self-hatred borne out of perfectionism and friction with outer stimuli. But I have never regulated my own esteem nor felt empowered by the tearing down of others, and thus it would only be through oppressing me to my high boiling point do I flip a switch and systematically eviscerate others to render them no longer a threat. At that point, I am emphatically not a good person and can be downright diabolical in my goal to annihilate and purge. I do not easily humiliate or put anyone in a compromising situation, not for petty reasons, not for zero-sum power games, and least of all to inflate my own sense of worth. On the contrary, I’d experience guilt for a very long time afterwards and I tend to want to make it up to the person I wronged. I strongly believe that nobody gets away with anything, so it is up to myself to make things right.Moreover, lithium has unusual retrograde reactivity: it is more soluble in cold temperatures than hot ones, and where Sodium has a violent reaction; lithium reacts more slowly. I find that to be hilarious as a paradox, because when the stakes are really high involving other lives (such as when under gunfire with a live shooter) I get really calm and steady, able to defuse the situation, self-sacrificially if need be. I’m really good at leading people through extremely tense situations such as suicides or hostile unsafe circumstances in disputed territories. My Ni will kick in and I’ll know exit strategies that nobody knows how I knew. But watch me have a meltdown over the most minor thoughtless interactions such as XNTXs throwing out my old bananas without asking me.As a child before the age of 12, I was about the skinniest, shy-est, perfectionistic loner girl on the playground making sand shapes with my plastic spoon... but a number of incidents stand out in my mind when I threw rocks at heads, piercingly screamed into ear drums and kicked the blood out of larger, older boys who were bullying someone else… not only to the point of publicly embarrassing them, but also their parents were extremely upset with the long term bruising and physiological damages I had inflicted with my “rages.” Looking back, I scarcely can even recognize my kind and soft-spoken self when the assassin-mode rears its viciousness in attack mode; all I know is that after a certain line is crossed I feel zero fear, zero pain, and this cold calculated wrath. By then there is no holds barred, hyper-focused “I will destroy you” Joan of Arc sort of insanity unleashed, and somebody’s gonna get hurt real bad.We’re simultaneously harder than other metals but also softer than other metals. So you’ve gotta ask yourself one question—do you feel lucky, punk?While other personality elements obey the octet rule filling up s- and p- orbitals, Lithium goes by the duet rule. What apparently looks like me being sociable with hundreds of people almost always involves being adopted on the outer edges by an extravert cluster who has many transactional electrons for ionic bonds. I really don’t prefer that, as, such “friends” of electrostatic attraction will liberally loan out my electron services and it totally changes my original character until I am almost lost and fundamentally unrecognizable to myself (chameleon tendency) but it happens a lot because I will unconsciously adapt my role to be what people most need me to be.(I really do facilitate the betterment of their lives both emotionally and materially, and people notice the attentiveness to personal detail. As such, from a cursory glance it always surprises people that I can have deep relating and be on good terms with warring folks who just can’t get along with each other, have polarizing values of my own and yet the way I present my values seem to resonate with everyone. It is no problem to disagree with my most Trump-commited gun-rights-loving veterans, and also be in touch with those who have been in prison or homeless, and have them help out refugee families I’ve chosen when I consistently do things for their welfare and support them privately through their most difficult times.)Case in point, I don’t align with climate change and abortion, but most along the political left will find my perceptions to not stem from willful ignorance or oppression, but rather being able to attune into factors that they cannot, and mostly respect my independently founded conclusions.I may seem like a vulnerable loner, preferring to hike by myself for hours every day and sensitive to the poetry of nature….but when I actually got robbed, I immediately spoke to the city mayor and sheriff face-to-face about an action plan, got their private contact numbers so I can text them, we set up surveillance and a community server along with the law enforcement and military presence in my vicinity. A lot of people who see me journaling, painting, gardening or dressing feminine seem to underestimate this paradoxical masculine aspect of me.Just like when they see my lithe ectomorph body, their eyes really pop out when we do food distribution, I powerlift hundreds of really heavy of crates. I appear vulnerable and delicate… until something needs to be done for others or the community can benefit from my involvement.Of course, INFJs not irrevocably fixing problems for “the collective well-being” because if others are going to deliberately lose their way, I’m not above letting people reap what they sow. People enjoying the INFJ loyalty may forfeit the allegiance once they cross a certain line. At the point of no return, we give up that single electron altogether and surprise, bi*ch: look up our chemistry, we’re even more happy and stable without it. *doorslam*… Ain’t that the truth … (Source: Google)Lithium is found in igneous rock and borne out of the Big Bang or exploding stars. We are still unable to explain how it’s made, but the enormous flashpoint required reminds me of the crucible in which INFJs remember their formative years. There is some elegant poetry in knowing that lithium isotopes were simultaneously synthesized and destroyed in the reactions to their environment and thus made rare.Why does it seem like most INFJs have dark pasts?As Lithium ion is used in rechargeable batteries, I would heartily agree that when INFJs have energy we are little powerhouses… just not the bombastic extraverted way.At my best, I am practical, efficient, and intensely focused on getting from Point A to Point B. I work by myself, often doing the group project by myself, and won’t stop until I deliver the final product to completion, though I will allow others to take full credit. Once INFJs see the higher purpose for our involvement, we will dedicate an extraordinary amount of effort to see it come to fruition.What are INFJs really good at?The other interesting thing about exertion of energy is that INFJs have busy minds. I am always trying to find the exact balance to reconcile opposites, finding ultimate truths and and extracting meaning in abstract concepts. I am not a knowledge specialist, instead, finding patterns in a great many disparate subjects which took time and effort to master with some degree of competency. A good portion of my diary pages, for instance, are thoughts and feelings of other people that have percolated my awareness, and my perceptions of them; a double-entry journal of sorts. Topics about nature, space, time, consciousness, future technology and music greatly occupy my attention because they tend to have universal appeal.Also, less so than other types, I take do not take constructs of modern reality for granted, and have quite detailed visions of my own self in incarnations as a savage and also as an android, as well as future potentials of material science that will enable different building constructions. What others seem resigned to seeing constraints as “the way things are” tends to be only a temporary variable for me. I seldom worry about the rapid dying of species on Earth now, because I have seen new possibilities of animal-, and plant-life after the destructiveness of humans takes its cycle and life rebalances.At times with all the visions, the knowings, the theorizing and the sudden aha-insights, I find it fitting that the application of the lithium-ion battery is mostly in portable technologies that facilitate communications and moving around.The last thing I will relate with lithium is that, because it is extraordinarily small, it is used in medicines since it can cross both the blood brain barrier and the placenta to affect an unborn fetus. Metaphorically speaking, for purposes of healing an INFJ has a way to get inside your mind, and tap into your inner child.As far as defense mechanisms, most people’s armor around their most most vulnerable assets are developed to keep foreign elements out, but for all intents and purposes, to the INFJs’ perception, it is as if the barriers aren’t even there!I have blurted statements aloud that, to my mind were observable truths, but rendered others naked, exposed and shut down. It is in fact a learning process of politeness for INFJs to recognize to what extent stating the obvious (to us) is actually piercing, invasive, and scary for others to find out, and to keep most of our “insights” to ourselves.During my undergraduate years I worked in a blood-brain barrier lab, which underscored how masterfully the membrane kept pathogens (and antibodies) out of brain sac. Presently when I think about lithium in relation to INFJs, it strikes me with great clarity that…of course… if the soft organs were suddenly aware that something foreign somehow got inside, for sure it would be first and foremost frightened and alarmed before it has a chance to ascertain whether it was benign or harmful, which explains people’s reactions to my prescient announcements of their inner world. It’s like abruptly finding a stranger inside the sanctum of your closed mind.But if you have always walked around barefaced without cosmetics, the fact that most adult women can no longer leave the house without makeup, takes some radical getting used to!

I don’t think anyone can offer you the answer to the “how long” part.But I can offer you the “how to”. The stage, theatre came about as an entertainment and expression of both literature and freeform new composition and the medium of that expression is the voice. Still spoken even today, the voice was given song and melody. And I’m not signalling that there was yet any musical accompaniment as that came much later. To add a piped or string accompaniment was then a novelty. But I digress. There is a reason I introduced what I have to write this way.“Powerful” and “Singing” do not necessarily have to be in combination. We need “powerful” only for unmiked performances, but I think even in some operas today, some performances are miked! Yes! We do not need that sort of “power” that was the very basis for opera then. The focus, nonetheless, remains on “singing”.The human body is truly a marvel. A puny teen can develop into a beefcake by assiduously lifting and pumping with ever-increasing resistance training. A teen can develop into a post-doctoral student over, say (4+2+4) 10 years of dedicated study and application. A trained singer can discipline and even enlarge his/her vocal compass by a good octave. So too with “power”. I recall the article I once read that Richard Burton had to go into the forest and train to speak up and out. That gave him a developed elocution advantage over those who didn’t train any more than within the confines of a theatre hall. But how many aspiring theatre acting students get to practice in a hall? Room, yes.If you want power, you need to define the meaning of it, and the parameters it relates to. After you have this, choose a place that replicates the parameters.A word of caution for beginners. Always have someone, like a teacher/coach/mentor, be at the periphery of the set parameters to listen to how you are coming across. Whatever you do, do not go ‘shouty’ when you practice. Powerful voices are clear in enunciation, so they need to be carried over by the supported breath through the engagement of your resonance chamber. [Shouting constricts the vocal tract and is not the way.]Open-air practices can be good practice as they often have to be done without musical accompaniment so you do not practice memorizing your lines this way. You practice only on the delivery of the sound. And you want to produce full, round tones. Doing tonic, ascending scales is one way if you aim to hold each note a full 4-beats long. It gets difficult, obviously as you do this at the upper reaches of your vocal range. You need to remember to engage your chest register into your ‘mix’ or otherwise this practice will lead to injury. It is only the chest register that can be developed.Of course if you need assistance with pitching, use whatever you need. Lots of apps available for the smartphone today.Now the “how long” does one do this? Well, for as long as it takes (in terms of years), but practice sessions should never exceed 20–30 mins each time.Finally, I have this one thing to say, and it might not go well with teachers who espouses singing in the masque. “Powerful” singing engages and focuses the sound into the resonating chambers and NOT ONLY through the nasal/sinus cavities as masque singing espouses.If I have to be sexist, I have to be labelled so here. Women, because of their higher voice ranges (contraltos, mezzos, sopranos) tend more readily to focus their singing sound in the masque and by that lose much control in not accessing the full depth of their chest register. Many don’t know how. Teachers need to teach and help develop their lady students’ chest register.Men, on the other hand, almost in all cases use their chest register very readily in speech already, and readily without coaxing will sing exclusively in it. Teachers need to teach and help develop their men students’ mix and head register.Singing in the masque favours women more readily and the higher male voices, the tenors. Contraltos, Baritones and Basses need more of the non-masque technique and proper development of the formant that full-throat singing gives. It is the level of development of the ‘formant’ that gives the voice “power”. Often it is also very colourful, too.However it needs to be said that that power is not totally useful unless it is also engaged to the squillo of the voice. And that comes from the masque. So how? The free voice is one that engages ALL resonators of the head and is energised from the diaphragm, the supported breath. The formant carries over wide spaces and the squillo focusses the sound, here, the words, the notes. We need both to do the job.Singing as with speaking, is actually an involuntary, yet voluntary, ability of Humans. If we observe the squealing child we wonder how all that sound can come from such a tiny thing, right? That is power and it was a natural thing. Do note that each time that child screams, it’s belly is pumping hard. We can learn from this. It is the fullness of the breath and the engagement of the entire resonance chambers. The sound is loud, bright and very clear. That is the sound of the free voice.You need to have a teacher who is qualified and experienced to help you do that, so no going off the forests and blasting away! You need proper guidance and feedback.Hopefully I have addressed your concerns from my answer.