Chance me for T20 finance programs

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)

What do you really do? Please do not exaggerate your ECs.

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)

In my opinion, the above schools should all be considered reaches unless your SAT score really does bump up.

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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.

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No recruitment for Investment Banking

No exaggeration at all in fact a slight understatement

This too. Are these colleges affordable for your family?

I don’t think “second generation immigrant” will mean anything in admissions.

As long as you are happy with your sure thing admission in Florida, then apply away.

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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.

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IB recruitment will not come to you, it is up to you to find internships…which are available from any college. Really.

What will you do if you don’t get into McIntyre or Kenan-Flagler soph year?

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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.

And this about Notre Dame REA

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.

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And NYU

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

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And Columbia:

Columbia University offers Early Decision but does not offer Early Action for freshman admissions.

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And Vanderbilt

Does Vanderbilt have Early Action?

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.

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And UT Austin

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

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But a few of the schools you listed do have EA. And yes, it would be good to apply to those EA. Except pay attention to the ones marked REA or SCEA.

I think most of your applications will be regular decision from what I’ve noted above.

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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.

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Note that Columbia, Stern, Berkeley, Vandy, and UF do not have EA.

You are also auto admit for Kelley.

Difficult to make any more recommendations until we know your budget.

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Congratulations on being a competitive applicant. I will only address UC Berkeley.

  1. 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.

https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/

  1. Have you taken at least 1 year of a Visual/Performing arts course which is a UC requirement?

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

https://pages.github.berkeley.edu/OPA/our-berkeley/ug-admissions.html

Best of luck.

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I meant risking it with ED Penn or being safer with ED UVA

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.

https://npc.collegeboard.org/app/upenn

https://npc.collegeboard.org/app/virginia

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