Looking for input on my chances at top business programs, additionally would love some opinion on whether I should play it safe and ED UVA or ED Penn. Thanks!
Brazilian Second Generation Immigrant
US Citizen
Florida
Somewhat competitive high school
Male Latino
Finance Major
Unweighted HS GPA: 3.87
Weighted HS GPA : 5.1/4.0
Class Rank: 24/497
SAT 1440 (Retaking October hoping to get 1500+)
22 AP/IB/ DE classes included senior year.
Awards
AP Scholar
Honor Roll (4x)
IB Diploma Candidate
NHS Merit
Paid Business consulting internship (Advised on email marketing and social media strategy and effectively increased open rates by an average of 35%)
Venture Capital Internship (Performed market research and created a pitch deck)
Shift Supervisor at local restaurant
CEO of a business with 10k YTD rev
Tutored 4 kids in my neighborhood for a combined 100+ hours, increased grades by an average of 4%.
Ran a committee in NHS to create holiday cards for veterans and teachers, also ran a drive to collect supplies for back to school and provided materials for 200+ families.
Varsity Track freshman year
LORs
Econ Teacher (9/10)
English Teacher (11/10)
UCF (auto admit)
Indiana Kelley (ea)
UF(ea)
UVA(ea)
UNC(ea)
Notre Dame(ea)
UC Berkeley(ea)
Penn Wharton(ed)
UMich Ross(ea)
Georgetown(rd)
Vanderbilt(ea)
UT Austin(ea)
NYU Stern(ea)
Columbia(ea)
UVA and UNC business programs are not direct admit. Their admission process is holistic. Even with good grades there’s no guarantee you would get to major in business. You would need to transfer or major in something different. I wouldn’t ED UVA unless you also like Economics or some other major.
Maybe replace with Emory, BC, Villanova or SMU.
Do you have a budget? Most of your schools are very expensive and don’t offer merit.
Just curious why FSU isn’t on the list? S21 is there for a different major. Loves it.
Did you do any research on these schools?
How much can you afford?
I’ll address Berkeley first, since I am from California, and am more familiar with the UC system than the other schools listed.
I am sure that @Gumbymom can give you more explicit details on the UC system and likelyhood of admission based on your stats.
It’s full fees for non-residents. That’s $67K per year to students who don’t live, work, reside, nor pay taxes in California.
Oh, and Berkeley, along with the rest of the UC’s, don’t do “Early Action”, so I don’t know where you received your information about Early Action.
Also, the UC’s don’t do “Affirmative Action” by law, so race and ethnicity are not really considered in admissions.
They do consider and prioritize in-state residents since their taxpayer parents support the UC’s.
Edited to add: you’ve picked a lot of public universities, whose priority is in-state students, and whose funding is derived from those individual states’ taxpayers.
I think you have a great chance at UF, and a slight chance at the reach schools. Definitely worth applying if you have the time for essays and the application $.
The reach schools are likely to be swayed by how you write and describe the impact of your ECs more than being impressed by them. Why did you do them, what did you learn, and what next?
Finally, your math grades and highest level of math are going to be important too. Most top business schools like to see Calc BC at a minimum.
Notre Dame has a Restrictive Early Action program . A student applying Restrictive Early Action to Notre Dame may apply to other Early Action programs, but not to any college or university that has a binding Early Decision program.
NYU offers two of these application options: Early Decision and Regular Decision. Early Decision I and Early Decision II are two separate waves to apply ED
Note: Vanderbilt does NOT offer an Early Action decision plan. Please refer to the admissions office of each school you are applying to for institution-specific policies.
Does The University of Texas at Austin have early action? We do not offer early action . However, we do offer a priority deadline for our U.S. freshman applicants
How is an ED app to Penn playing it safe? 22 AP classes and a high GPA are going to read “grade inflation” unless you’ve been getting 5’s in those AP’s and get your SAT scores up.
Take off track. If you didn’t keep up with it, it just looks like padding.
Congratulations on being a competitive applicant. I will only address UC Berkeley.
UC’s only use 10-11th a-g course grades for their GPA calculation. As an OOS applicant, only AP/IB or DE UC Transferable courses will be weighted in the GPA calculation. OOS Honors courses are not weighted by the UC’s.
Have you taken at least 1 year of a Visual/Performing arts course which is a UC requirement?
UCB is not a direct admit to the HAAS Business school until 2024 so you will have to go through a secondary admission process during Sophomore year. If applying to the College of Letters and Sciences, you are admitted as Undeclared and then have to meet course/GPA requirements to declare a major.
UC’s offer little to no financial aid to OOS students. As noted by @aunt_bea, you should expect to a full pay student if accepted.
UC’s are test blind and do not consider race/ethnicity/sex in their admission review.
Below is the overall admit rates by each UC campus using the Capped Weighted UC GPA:
Campus
4.20+
3.80-4.19
3.40-3.79
3.00-3.39
Berkeley
30%
11%
2%
1%
Davis
85%
55%
23%
10%
Irvine
60%
31%
14%
1%
Los Angeles
29%
6%
1%
0%
Merced
97%
98%
96%
89%
Riverside
97%
92%
62%
23%
San Diego
72%
25%
2%
0%
Santa Barbara
73%
28%
4%
1%
Santa Cruz
91%
81%
46%
9%
The link below breakouts the Fully Weighted UC GPA admit rates for the College of Letters and Sciences (2021 most current data) for the College of Letters and Sciences.
Do Penn and UVA look affordable per their net price calculators? If you haven’t done those, you need to sit down with your parents and do them. You can’t apply ED anywhere that doesn’t look affordable.
If your parents are divorced, own a business, or own real estate beyond a primary home, the NPCs may not be accurate…are any of those the case for you? Make sure to include your business income in the NPCs.