JacobBlog!

5/7/10
In terms of college applications, breadth in your abilities has a multiplier effect rather than a linear additive effect. essentially, your goal is to make yourself in the highest percent to possible for desirability. Getting into the highest percentile ranges in any specific field will do that. However it is often more difficult to do that than to simply put yourself in high but slightly lower percentile ranges in multiple disparate fields (for example computer science, business, surfing, and English). whereas it is often extremely difficult to put yourself on the very edges of the Bell curve, it is less difficult to put yourself in your the upper tip of multiple bell curves — then your percentiles will be multiplied in ascertaining your ultimate college applicant desirability score. The more disparate the fields are, the stronger the multiplier effect is, as overlapped detracts from the exponential increasing rarity that the combinations induce. It was commented that the most interesting point to my college application was that I had won a poetry contest as well as did technology and surfing. Another excellent combination I have seen is archery, robotics, and computer science.
Somebody want to work this out rigorously?