US citizen, permanent resident
Located in Illinois
College Preparatory Catholic All-Boys School
Male - Caucasian
Soccer Player
Intended Major(s)
*Econ, Psych, Neuroscience, Computer Science
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted HS GPA: 4.0
Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): 4.70
Class Rank: 3rd
ACT/SAT Scores: 35 ACT with ten writing
Coursework
*11 AP’s mostly 4s and some 3s. Calc BC by senior year (highest level of math). I finished Spanish track my sophomore year. Took as many APs as possible
Awards
Illinois State Scholar
National Honors Society
AP Scholar with Honor
Highest grade in 8/11 AP Classes
Extracurriculars
Built business with an $800,000 valuation
Internship at a real estate investment company
Soccer state championship - starter as a freshman
Captain of the soccer team
Started a tutoring club at school - go in early every morning - have about ten students tutoring
President of two clubs - raised over $5,000 for both
Started a community garden bringing together an impoverished community - built it myself
Social Media Director for community service organization - raised over $5,000
Math team member - highest score amongst my team
Captain of the tennis team
Business Club member
Essays/LORs/Other
Excellent - LORs - one teacher said I was best student he ever taught
Pretty good essays
Cost Constraints / Budget
No cost restraint
Schools
Northeastern - EA
UMichigan business - EA
U of I - EA
UW-Madison - EA
USC - EA
UMiami - EA
Northeastern - EA
Cal Poly-Pomona - EA
UCLA - RD
UC Berkeley - RD
UC San Diego - RD
UC Santa Barbara - RD
Pomona - ED - was deferred
Claremont McKenna - RD
UPenn - RD
Boston College - RD
Vanderbilt - RD
Yale - RD
Duke - RD
UNC - RD
Stanford - RD
Please Chance me and if there are any suggestions, Match me too.
You’re a very impressive candidate. I’d say you will get in at your EA schools, and for RD I think you’ll get into BC, maybe Vanderbilt, UCSB, UCSD. Claremont, UNC. I think that Stanford and Yale will reject you. I think that Penn and Duke are long shots for you.
Unless you get substantial fin aid bringing the cost way down, I’d urge you to go to U Mich. It’s in state for you, is prestigious, will not keep you from becoming anything you want to become. Full pay at privates is just not worth it, especially when your flagship instate U is Michigan.
OP states he’s in Illinois, not Michigan. I agree with the rest of your assessment, substituting UIUC for Umich. I think UCLA and UCB are very long shots too. Northeastern may defer.
How was this valuation obtained? Through an independent investor? This very large number might raise eyebrows unless you’ve clearly explained this in your app.
I’m curious about this as well. If you can build a business with an $800K valuation while also maintaining a 4.0 in high school, it might be better to concentrate on building that business full time.
Basically, I think this is just expectation setting. You have a great high school application and you can get into any of your choices and it would not be a big surprise, but you could also not get into any of the reaches (Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, Yale, Duke, Stanford, etc) and that would not be a huge surprise either (but if I were betting on this, I’d bet you’d get into at least 2 reaches.
The problem is demand is very, very high, and these schools get thousands of applications with equally impressive students, and they need to select the ones they want, and that usually comes down to the admissions officers and your essays. Each school has a mission statement and a vision and you need to show that you further advance that mission/vision. It’s tough.
Some kids with lower stats will get into schools you get rejected from. But you have a great resume and you’ll get into some awesome schools.
Ah ok, yea it’s been over the course of five years. I guess valuation wasn’t the right word to use, but here I can explain. So I was very into shoes in middle school and saw the potential for selling shoes on the after market. I was able to score a couple of pairs at retail price and make a return of around 100% by selling them. I showed my father this potential and he told me to write him a business plan and he’d pour in a couple thousand dollars for boys (automated shoe purchasing codes) and another couple thousand for capital (money to buy a large quantity of shoes). Yes I know this is very informal. Long story short, with bots and Chicago raffles, I was successfully able to purchase anywhere from 5-30 shoes per limited release, and with the shoes with less return but more ability to purchase, I used economies of scale. With multiple releases a month, and with striking a deal with a physical retail store (once I had grown enough, I was selling online before) I essentially became the middleman. Letting the bots buy shoes for me, driving them over to stores, and letting them sell the shoes for me while taking 15%. Fast forward I have $350,000 of inventory sitting in storage, waiting to be sold, and have profited around $500,000. Most of the money I earn just goes directly into the business, allowing me to buy and sell more.
Ah ok, yea it’s been over the course of five years. I guess valuation wasn’t the right word to use, but here I can explain. So I was very into shoes in middle school and saw the potential for selling shoes on the after market. I was able to score a couple of pairs at retail price and make a return of around 100% by selling them. I showed my father this potential and he told me to write him a business plan and he’d pour in a couple thousand dollars for boys (automated shoe purchasing codes) and another couple thousand for capital (money to buy a large quantity of shoes). Yes I know this is very informal. Long story short, with bots and Chicago raffles, I was successfully able to purchase anywhere from 5-30 shoes per limited release, and with the shoes with less return but more ability to purchase, I used economies of scale. With multiple releases a month, and with striking a deal with a physical retail store (once I had grown enough, I was selling online before) I essentially became the middleman. Letting the bots buy shoes for me, driving them over to stores, and letting them sell the shoes for me while taking 15%. Fast forward I have $350,000 of inventory sitting in storage, waiting to be sold, and have profited around $500,000. Most of the money I earn just goes directly into the business, allowing me to buy and sell more.
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OK - very cool. That isn’t an $800K business valuation… basically it’s valuation would be about the value of your inventory (about $350K) and if there’s any IP in the bots you are using… but it sounds like the bots are available for anyone with technical know how as is.
From a general technical perspective, you’ve had $500K in net revenue (total revenue minus capital costs), but unless you are paying yourself a salary or a wage, you aren’t valuing your time in there either, which would go into a true valuation.
It’s still impressive. I’d drop the valuation term and describe the business venture and the current scale/inventory.
Yes thank you, I just put valuation for lack of better terms. In my common app I separated it with $350 inventory and $500 gross. Was just trying to consolidate on this.
It is interesting how we all have different opinions - and that shows how unpredictable this has become. I don’t have much to add except anecdotal info.
Last year DS with 1550/NMF/4.0 with less APs b/c our district doesn’t let you start until 11th grade (but highest rigor), applied as engineer, with a little less impressive ECs had the following results:
Northeastern - EA - deferred and then waitlisted
Michigan - EA - postponed and then admitted.
Penn - RD - rejected (mom is alum)
Vanderbilt - RD - waitlisted
Duke - RD - accepted
Also accepted at Cornell (RD), Purdue Honors (EA), UIUC (EA) and waitlisted at Carnegie Mellon (RD) and Rice (RD).
So for the people saying yes to Vanderbilt over Duke, that wasn’t our experience. And Northeastern is also so hard to predict. But given the strength of your application I do think one or two of the reaches will come through. It could be Duke - watching the class of 2026 it seemed like they really liked self starters/independent people.
I’m partially posting as I’m super curious how the UC schools go.
You did it already. You’re a really impressive applicant. Yes, you will probably wind up at your in-state flagship U (Ilinois), and honestly, that’s the best bang for your buck.
The only thing that you need college for is social life and a liberal arts education, so that you can get the most enjoyment out of art, music, etc in life, plus history and poli sci type classes so that you can be an educated human being, plus you need the basic business classes like accounting, marketing, etc so that you understand what is happening in running your business. Of course, you can study in and major in anything you want, but you’re going to do very well in business, running your own business, I think.
You are going to be a huge financial success in life, and early on, too, I think. You know how to discern a financial opportunity, you know how to go after it and turn a profit on it.
I think that if you wrote about what you did with the shoe resale business, that you might get into Wharton at Penn, if that’s what you want.
Too many reach schools. IMO, your apps will suffer because the temptation will be to recycle a lot of essays. Given your accomplishments, maybe the Pomona deferral (vs acceptance) is an indication that your app was too generic? When do you expect results for the EA schools?
Question: you applied ED to Pomona, a very small school. The rest of the schools on your list, with the exception of CMC, are much larger. Why not take out some of the big schools and select a few more SLACs? You could even apply to one ED2.
College applications are not like lottery tickets, it is not the more you play the better the chance to win. Yes, smart to apply to a range because schools may value your app differently, but too many can’t help but dilute the quality of the apps. For the single digit acceptance rate schools, they have the luxury of only picking the students who can demonstrate how that school can make a difference to the applicant and vice versa. While your accomplishments are to be congratulated, you are the typical average excellent student and there will be about 10,000 equivalent students for these schools to choose from.