Chance Me for Top Business Schools

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

I’m a rising junior planning on majoring in marketing or business administration and management. I was unable to take the SAT or ACT this year, but some of my top choices have already gone test-optional. I’m looking to apply to USC (TO), Cornell (TO), UC Berkeley (TO), UPenn, Washington, Georgetown, UVA, Emory, Indiana University, William & Mary, and SMU. I’m planning on taking the SAT and ACT if they hold them as planned in August or are successful in creating an effective online version, but if neither works then I assume the rest of the schools on my list that haven’t gone TO will have to as well.

GPA: 3.65 UW/ 4.2 W
(I got straight B’s freshman year due to family troubles but straight A’s sophomore and senior years, so my transcript makes my low UW GPA more understandable)

AP/Honors Courses:
Freshman: AP Human Geo (5), Honors Biology, Honors English
Sophomore: AP Gov (4), Honors Chem, Honors English
Junior: AP Physics (?), AP Art History (?), AP Lang (?), APUSH (?), skipped a year of French
Senior: AP Micro and Macro (?), AP Stats (?), AP Lit (?), AP Psych (?), Honors French
(I took the maximum number of AP and Honors classes available for each year with the exception of math)

EC’s:
-Owner of a successful high-end clothing company, White Noise, for 2 years (designed clothes, planned promotional campaigns, took promotional photos, kept track of finances, pretty much everything but model)
-Founder and President of the Design Club at my high school (planned a dress drive for this year’s prom with DECA, but it didn’t materialize for obvious reasons)
-DECA State 3rd Place in Professional Selling with the top test score (qualified for nationals, but it was canceled)
-Managed and planned a successful online gallery to support local artists and designers, of which we donated 10% of the earnings to Project C.U.R.E. to help fight COVID-19
-Wrote and directed a short film to promote the Spring/Summer White Noise Collection
-Freelance Graphic Design (designed logos and promotional materials for numerous reputable local businesses)
-Freelance Photography (took promotional photos for a wide range of clients)
-Volunteered at Project C.U.R.E. with SNHS (10 hrs)
-English Tutor (70 hrs)

  • I was accepted into UC Berkeley’s summer entrepreneurship program, but it was canceled of course
    (I’m also a part of NHS, NEHS, FNHS, and Rho Kappa but mainly for the community service opportunities)

I apologize for the manic amount of detail, but I wanted to make sure you guys had a clear understanding of my application and situation since it’s a bit unconventional.

I also know at least one person is gonna say UC Berkeley doesn’t give OOS students aid and to look up net price calculators, but I earn enough from my business that I can nearly split the full cost of attendance of any school with my parents, so finances are not an issue.

2

The list sort of looks like you’re throwing darts at a road atlas. I have to take-it with a grain of salt when a teenager declares that “money isn’t an issue.” $300,000 is ALWAYS an issue unless you’re Michael Bloomberg. Paying triple the tuition for a bachelors degree adds no additional value, and won’t offer you any more than an entry-level job–adjusted for the local cost of living. You can get triple the value going to an in-state university. Save your money.

3

People on here hate to admit it but the school you goes to does matter for business. I think you have a good chance, I got into babson when people on here said I wouldn’t. Make sure you have good recommendations and essays and try to take the sat/act they’ve added new dates.

4

May I ask how you got this opportunity?
“-Managed and planned a successful online gallery to support local artists and designers, of which we donated 10% of the earnings to Project C.U.R.E. to help fight COVID-19”

5

There are only a handful of fields within the business world where the college prestige matters. IB and Consulting are the most well known for focusing on “target” school recruitment. If your long-term goals are in other areas of business, then it largely doesn’t matter where you get your degree from. Of the schools on your list, only two are considered targets for IB: Cornell and UPenn. The others would be considered semi-target or non-target.

Is it worth $300K for this prestige? Thats a question that only you can answer. But take a careful look at what your projected salary would be.

6

I’m curious as to how my list is like “shooting darts at a road atlas”. The schools I listed are the best in the majors I’m interested in pursuing, and they are also all private schools because me and my parents made a combined $450,000 before taxes in the last year, so private schools are the only ones I could get any financial aid at, considering even my state school, CU Boulder, would be more expensive for me than UPenn according to their net price calculators (after taxes!). I’m also not planning on abandoning a successful business doing what I love anytime soon, so the impact the school has on my future career is irrelevant to me (I feel like many people on this site have a different perception of what successful means for a teenager, but my company has had almost $80,000 in revenue YTD). And, as for the gallery, I had the idea a while ago and then was able to get a meeting with a store in Denver that has the same target demographic, so I pitched the idea to them, and they loved it, so they helped run it off of a merged website with their’s and used all of their resources they could to promote it, so it was a lot more successful than I had predicted. That’s most of the reason my revenue is already over $80,000 before the end of Q2 during a global economic crisis. I’m also not really sure how business schools wouldn’t be a little impressed by that.