Chances for T20 Schools

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hello everyone, I’m a rising senior applying to enter the class of 2025. This is a “chance me” post, as I feel that I have a fairly unique profile, and I was wondering what the fine people on College Confidential thought that my chances were at some of the more competitive universities.

Stats:
~3.8 UW GPA (a couple B’s freshman and sophomore yr, along with a C sophomore yr. My counselor will help explain the reasoning. Straight A’s Junior yr and likely first semester Senior year). 8 AP’s - 2 in Junior year and 6 in Senior year. Mostly honors outside of those.

  • 35 Composite ACT (took once, 35 in all sections besides a 34 in math). 8 on writing.

Intended major: Business management or economics

ECs:

  • Owner of a fairly large start-up company, slated to do over $300K in revenue by the end of 2020, with over $225K profit. Founded in January. I will elaborate on this more in essays and such, I won’t elaborate too much here for privacy reasons. I will say that it is a subscription based service currently pulling in about $30K in monthly recurring revenue. That number has grown approximately 25% each month since March. This takes up tons of my free time, by far my biggest EC.
  • Varsity Football (4 yrs, lightly recruited, might play in college. Started on team for 3 yrs). Possible captain senior year.
  • Varsity Lacrosse (4 yrs, will be captain senior year. Started on team for 3 yrs).
  • Founder of startup during my Sophomore year. Active from Feb 2019 - June 2019. Did over $15K revenue and $6K profit during the 4 months it was active. Ended up shutting it down due to the fact my grades were suffering heavily, plus some outside factors unrelated to school.
  • Head of Business Direction for tech company (in the works. Not much info can be given atm, we hope to be doing similar numbers to the first startup I mentioned).
  • Volunteering at youth football and lacrosse camps (only did for a couple of weeks the last two summers)
  • Sneaker reselling (active from Freshman - end of sophomore year). Once again, slowed down on this to focus on school. Sold over 200 pairs for about $40K revenue. Profit margins weren’t anything to brag about

That’s about it, all of my ECs are specialized in either business or sports, not sure if that’s a good thing or not. I don’t find any of the clubs at my school to be of any use to me, so I didn’t join any.

Schools I plan on applying to -
UPenn (Wharton)
Cornell (Dyson)
USC (Marshall)
Harvard (economics)
Duke (economics)
…plus some other top 20s. I don’t expect at all to get into any, and that’s ok. Paying $70k a year for an education probably isn’t the move anyways.

Thanks for reading, if you have any advice or if you have opinions on my chances for some of these schools, feel free to drop a comment on this post. Thanks again.

2

If you’re making 30k a month with a 75% profit margin…it sounds like you’re doing fine without a degree.

3

I would advise you to look into some safeties as well. You’re obviously as successful as can be on the business side, and athletic as well, but I fear there is a lack of breadth of extracurriculars. I’m sure this isn’t the case, but your application comes across as one-sided. Especially for the schools you mentioned, they value “intellectual curiosity” and a broader interest in learning, which you would have to communicate in your essays. Something about how business is more than making money, it’s also an intellectually stimulating activity, etc etc. So twist your ECs to show interest in learning and I think you have a shot. Those schools are obviously reaches for anyone, though.

4

I agree. However, I’m not sure how long this will be sustainable for. I hope to continue growing the company for the next 5 years, but realistically, the industry is extremely volatile, and I’m not confident that I’ll be able to do this for the next 5-10 years. I’d like to get a good education to ensure that if things indeed do go south, I’ll be set.

5

I appreciate the advice. I’m a NC resident, meaning that I have UNC as sort of a “safety” school. They have a super solid business program at the undergraduate level, plus its extremely cheap for in-state students. If things go as expected, and I’m rejected from all of these elite top 20 schools, I have a very strong option to fall back on.