<p>I had anxiety and got poor grades. Started taking medication and now I get 4.0s. I'll never get into Harvard, Stanford, wherever by grades alone. But I <em>love</em> learning and being surrounded by smart people is my dream.</p>
<p>Let's say I start a business and become a self-made millionaire. Based on my performance in the real world, would that qualify me for admission?</p>
<p>Depends.</p>
<p>The #1 easiest by far way to get into any school you want to is to get a job there, and use their tuition benefits to prove that you can get As in their classes. </p>
<p>Then again, working as a janitor or clerk at an Ivy League university might meet your “love of learning” and “being surrounded by smart people” need.</p>
<p>If you become a self-made millionaire, you might not really need to go to Harvard, don’t you think?</p>
<p>Say it ain’t so, notjoe. I hope you don’t mean to suggest that the purpose of attending Harvard is to become a millionaire. I’m sure the scores of students who enroll as millionaires expect to benefit from their Harvard education.</p>
<p>@sherpa,</p>
<p>You’re right. No one goes to Harvard for the purpose of gaining wealth. No one at all. It’s just a coincidence that so many of these idealistic young people wind up going to work in finance and consulting and making large sums of money. LOL.</p>
<p>You can substitute Harvard with any top school in this question. Let’s not pick on Harvard, or limit ourselves to category titles listed on a website. The question reached its intended audience here.</p>
<p>@ChesterCheetah, in my wholly unqualified opinion-- yes, being a self-made millionaire could get you into Harvard.</p>
<p>BUT</p>
<p>Chances of being a self-made millionaire < Chances of being accepted by Harvard</p>
<p>So you’re saying there’s a chance!</p>
<p>That’s such an odd and unrealistic way of looking at things. “I wasn’t motivated enough in high school, so i’ll become a… millionaire to get into Harvard, Stanford, or wherever”. Sounds really childish to me.</p>
<p>Attaining millionaire status isn’t really a big deal. In my opinion, it is much easier to achieve than admission to Harvard. I doubt the admission people would be overly impressed.</p>
<p><a href=“Number of millionaires in U.S. reaches a new high”>http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/13/business/la-fi-mo-number-of-millionaires-in-us-reaches-a-new-high-20140313</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>@notjoe - Idealistic or not, most students are practical about taking jobs that pay well. In this economy, where many students graduate with grim employment prospects, I wouldn’t begrudge someone accepting a lucrative job offer.</p>
<p>I was simply questioning your apparent premise that the purpose of attending Harvard is to become wealthy. </p>
<p>I only know a few Harvard students, but a lot at Princeton. While none of the Princeton students I’ve known have been particularly driven by the pursuit of riches, many of them have accepted good paying jobs, including in finance and consulting. I think that’s a good thing.</p>
<p>@sherpa,</p>
<p>My posts herein were mostly tongue-in-cheek. It is difficult to take the original post seriously. I’m assuming this person is likely a junior in high school, or perhaps a sophomore. The first clue to me that perhaps I shouldn’t take the post all too seriously is that the poster appears to be looking for a way around the difficult path of academic achievement to obtain admission to a highly-selective college. The second clue is that the poster chooses a method which is even more unlikely than the regular route. Unless the poster has already patented some new technology, or has written the killer app of the 21st century already, this method is fantasy. What is proposed is unserious. Thus, my response is in a similar vein - not altogether serious.</p>
<p>As well, someone who thinks that a way to get into Harvard is to get rich by senior year of high school could very well be someone whose primary goal is to achieve wealth, for whom Harvard is more the means than the end. Thus, my question.</p>
<p>If the poster had said, “save the planet from global warming,” or “cure cancer,” or “write the great American novel,” my mind wouldn’t have traveled to the conclusion to which it came.</p>
<p>In any case, the course he sets out is not so easy as one might suppose. First, although many households do ultimately achieve net financial assets of a million dollars, it’s still a relatively-limited percentage of households - on the order of about 7%. </p>
<p>Second, speaking from experience, most folks accumulate even that modest level of wealth over a significant portion of their lifetime, of their working career. Many do it the old fashioned way - regular saving and investing. I know more than one person with a million dollars or more in ordinary retirement accounts who got that by saving a modest amount every year, investing in mutual funds, and not getting carried away with the emotions of the financial markets. Even still they are in the relatively-small minority of folks who achieve even such a modest level of wealth.</p>
<p>Third, there’s a difference between households with net financial assets of a million dollars or more and households of multimillionaires. When I look up “multimillionaire,” I get some version of “someone with many millions.” By “many,” I’d infer something more than two or three. Or even four. Or five. Less than 1% of households have net financial assets of as much as $5 million.</p>
<p>Getting to a million dollars over one’s lifetime is unusual. Becoming a multimllionaire by the time one is applying to college is an altogether different species of accomplishment. Two thousand folks will be admitted to Harvard this academic year. I doubt that two thousand high school seniors will become self-made multimillionaires.</p>
<p>It’s less likely that this poster will start a business and become a multimillionaire by the time it’s time for him to go to college than it is for him to get admitted to Harvard.</p>
<p>As for what motivates people, and what are their intentions, my own view is that most people have mixed motivations and intentions about most things. People who start down one path as a means to achieve another goal often get caught up in the immediate path, and never quite make it back to the original plan. Someone who starts a business to become a self-made multimillionaire in order to add it as an extracurricular activity for their college applications will either succeed or fail. If such an individual fails, it may not make much of an addition to the application, and thus may not overcome poor high school grades. If such an individual succeeds, he will be a very busy person; if he’s been all that successful, it’s quite likely that he will enjoy his work (enjoyment of one’s work and success at it are correlated), his success, and his career, and may find it difficult, or even nearly impossible, and possibly even undesirable to break away from what he’s created, and thus may become permanently side-tracked from the original goal, in this case, admission to a highly-selective university.</p>
<p>That being said, I assume that most folks who go to Harvard go for the education, the experience. I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know some of my sons’ friends at school, and most are not single-mindedly seeking great wealth. Yet, a significant minority of the graduates at Harvard wind up working in fields where the primary goal is business, and the business of making money, often in very large sums. I assume that, looking at the mix of concentrations at Harvard, many folks enter Harvard for that reason - to go out into the world of business and make tons of money. Thus, if they’d gotten to that goal without Harvard, perhaps Harvard may have been seen as optional. </p>
<p>I know others fall into it more or less by default, because other opportunities may not be quite as available. My older son, as a junior, is having to work through these sorts of issues, and the temptation to take the safe route - go make a lot of money in finance or consulting - is tempting, especially when more desirable options are fraught with uncertainty. As someone who has owned and run his own businesses for 30 years, I’m hardly critical of folks who go into business, even if the goal is primarily to make a lot of money. If one conducts one’s business affairs with honor and integrity, that is something the world needs.</p>
<p>Correction: The original poster only speaks of becoming a “self-made millionaire,” which I misread as “self-made multimillionaire.” Nonetheless, I’m doubtful that two thousand high school seniors will achieve even that status during this academic year.</p>
<p>
This reply is very curious to me, Cheetah. You seriously can’t be looking for affirmation from fellow HS students, Havard students or alumni parents for this. You already know that this likelihood is infiniteseminal.</p>
<p>Either you’re pulling our chain (likely) or you just hope to get into a spirited debate that won’t lead to anything substantive.</p>
<p>
It’s difficult for some teenagers to understand, but Harvard is an ACADEMIC institution – not an extracurricular camp or a playground for kids who performed well in the real world. Harvard is looking for top classroom scholars who have great grades and test scores, students who (from their teacher recommendations) have a proven track record of contributing to the classroom discussion with thoughtful and insightful comments. As the OP admittedly doesn’t have great grades, they are grasping at straws, trying to construct a world whereby they could be admitted. As others have said, it’s a fantasy and it’s not going to happen.</p>
<p>@notjoe - Thank you for your thoughtful explanation. Regrettably, I misread the tone in your earlier posts, an all too common problem on the internet. I can see that our backgrounds and perspectives are very similar. I can relate to your son’s quandary; my son is only a couple of years ahead of him on that road.</p>
<p>He entered Princeton “undecided”, wavering between philosophy and physics, and as a freshman decided on physics. I’m not sure if it’s because we were in the midst of the financial crisis, or more a reflection on his nature, but he then planned a safe route forward, preparing for admission to PhD programs, while knowing that he might go directly into the job market instead. He thrived in undergrad, graduating with Latin Honors, and was well positioned for PhD programs. As he prepared to apply to grad school he came across a “how to” book on admissions to elite physics graduate programs, and took very seriously it’s “are you really sure you want to do this?” chapter.</p>
<p>So he decided to check out his employment options. He quickly learned that, despite having spent his summers in the lab rather than in internships, students with his analytical skills were in high demand on Wall Street and in consulting.</p>
<p>It was an interesting time for him. Wonderful options make for difficult decisions. I’m very happy with the path he’s on. He didn’t “sell out”, and he’s enjoying his life.</p>
<p>@notjoe - Best wishes to your son.</p>
<p>@sherpa Wall Street takes physics majors??? And just out of curiosity, did your son ever return to physics or did he stay in finance/consulting?</p>
<p>I’ve always wondered why stuff like that happens-- students go into college considering philosophy and physics and ending up in finance and consulting-- but I don’t doubt you when you say he didn’t sell out. </p>
<p>@Karabekian - “Wall Street takes physics majors???” Yes, physics (and math) majors’ skills are well suited to Wall Street, where a finance background is less important than analytic horsepower.</p>
<p>"…did your son ever return to physics or did he stay in finance/consulting?" I think you may have misinterpreted my post. I wrote about his options, but I was intentionally vague about his decision.</p>
<p>At any rate, asking if just becoming a millionaire will do the trick is like asking if more APs will.</p>
<p>If you love learning and being surrounded by smart people, luckily, there are lots of place to throw yourself into learning and hang with smart folks. It just doesn’t always seem that way, in little worlds like CC. Or when our own thinking is …small.</p>
<p>A millionaire is what - a person who has a million dollars in the bank?</p>
<p>In my area of the country, near NYC, you would be middle class if you had a million dollars of assets.</p>