Chance me for Wharton ED? (Is it even worth a shot...)

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
1

Hi! New user here and currently a very stressed junior

I want to apply ED to Wharton (just because why not lol). I absolutely love Penn and I’ve visited, talked to department heads so I’m very sure this is my dream school. The only issue is I have no business extracurriculars

I would be trying to get in for the tech side of business (M&T???probably not lmao)

How much does ED realistically help, because with Penn I know 25% of ED accepts were legacy right? And that doesn’t include sports recruits :confused:

ANYWAYS
UW GPA: 3.94 (2/3 Bs are from middle school from a high school level class)
W GPA: 3.67
ACT: 35 (took it once, no superscore)
Subject tests: Math 2: 790

Classes: (H= honors)

Current classes: AP Spanish, AP Lang, AP Chinese, AP Physics 1 + 2, AP Calc AB, Programming (highest level class)

(I’ve taken three other APs, but got 3/3/5 because sophomore year I didn’t realize they mattered rip, unrelated to Wharton tho not sure how it’ll hurt me?)

ECs:

  1. Varsity Volleyball
  2. Internship at govt funded research institute not sure if I’m allowed to say (all year round, got in on my own/no connections)
  3. Editor for school newspaper
  4. President/organizer of a coding club
  5. 600+ service hours from being a camp counselor, volunteering at charities, service trip (taught kids in rural developing country. It was summer before sophomore year tho, but I got a leadership position above like graduated seniors due just because I was a little more outgoing and proactive lol)
  6. Interned under finance+HR at software company summer before junior year (this made me decide I didn’t want to just be an engineer lol)
  7. Culinary Adventures (just for funsies lol, no I’m not gonna list this on my app)
  8. Debate (well see I really only joined this for my friend to have a partner and to improve my public speaking, which worked because I have ZERO shame now since I’ve embarrassed myself so many times already)
    *really the top 4 are the most important lol

Awards:
Governor’s Service Aware
nothing else rip (we don’t have honor roll, NHS, ranking or whatever)

Extra info:
Female + Asian (Japanese)
OOS (MD)
No need for any financial aid (300k+)

Other schools planning on:
lmao shotgunning all Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, UCBerkeley, UCLA, Caltech, UChicago
safety is state school

Any advice for Wharton? I considered joining DECA or “starting a business”, but I thought it was kind of ungeniune to start junior year

2

how is your weighted less than your unweighted?

3

whoops I meant 4.67

4

You have an excellent chance so you should apply, but since its so competitive you still might be rejected. You need to spend a lot of time on your essays. No FA is also helpful.

5

would it be better to apply to penn engineering or CAS? Since most of my ECs are more STEM related

6

At Penn ED really helps, they fill half their class with ED admits. I would recommend applying to the college you really want to get in to.

7

For Wharton, having a business background helps, but it is not necessary. Applying ED will boost your application but as you stated, much of the ED admits are legacies and athletes so it won’t help as much as it perhaps used to. You are a competitive applicant. Write great essays and you could get accepted

8

Hey! I am a recent Wharton admit (not M&T) and plan to attend Penn this fall. By no means am I an admissions expert but I’d still love to offer my take on ur circumstances

Your grades, test scores, and course rigor are all great. DO NOT stress over these things (or 3 Bs, I had 3 Bs as well just from high school classes).
You have various leadership positions and EC involvement which is nice, but one thing I would suggest would be to use these organizations, and ur leadership positions in them, to make a communal impact. One of the largest things they stressed about during the admitted students days was how they want their students not simply to be successful for themselves but make the community/society successful as a whole. Maybe help organize a program within your club where you can volunteer to teach kids how to code and work on your public speaking skills (that u mentioned earlier) by speaking/directing a class of younger students. Have large-scale fundraising events within ur school/community so that you will be able to financially sustain this volunteering coding program, assuming that is something you’d be interested in doing. This is only one example of a million things you could do.

In short, whatever you do, make sure you do it to the fullest, not just to add another empty EC that many other students around the country can easily join/do. Go as far as you want to with it, and don’t let the risk of failure be the reason to stop you. If you fail, you get back up try something else :slight_smile:

9

congrats on Wharton! that’s so exciting!! Hopefully I’ll meet you in two years ://
How’d you like the campus (quaker days?)? I visited over break and I absolutely loved it haha

for the coding club it was actually a thing before but it died because the lack of organization and I just brought it back but had to organize speakers? It’s kind of like an “intro” class that helps students learn it if they don’t have enough space for classes or need help. I’m also trying to get speakers from the place I’m interning at since they’re professionals lol

For the editor thing is it too much a stretch to say I impacted the community? I changed the form of writing we use/innovated it kind of and increased reader activity due to that? (changed up graphics to be more interactive and the stylistic type of writing to be more personal since it’s the blogs section lol) not sure how much of a community impact there is, but I wrote a lot of essays on improving tech in our area and have been in contact w our superintendent about that,