Dubai Student thugging it out for Yale SCEA

[yale2028]

I need help making a decision for Yale SCEA (vs Wharton ED)

Demographics: Asian Male (Indian). Go to a top private school in Dubai. My school sends 1-2 kids to Yale/year and 8-10 to ivies in general

Intended Major: Microfinance/Developmental Economics

STATS

My school is a British school, so we do A levels. My a levels are Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Computer Science, and Economics (most rigorous course load offered).

I am predicted AAAA (A*economics and Further maths, A CS and Maths)

SAT - I took the test once and got a 1540 (760RW/780M)

GCSEs - I took 10 GCSEs - Maths, Eng lit, Eng lang, Bio, Chem, Phys, Further Math, Economics, DT, CS, French

Extracurriculars:

Founder of a Microfinance product (2years): I worked with a well known Bangladeshi microfinance company and helped them set up a new microfinance product, literally flew out to bangladesh and lived in the slums for a while and observed the loan process and was a part of the lending/credit cycles

Founder of a microfinance fund (2 years): I took 10% of the profits from my business each month (covered below) and put it toward interest-free loans to people in 3rd world countries for causes like farming (we helped one lady buy a goat and now she runs a small dairy in her village, etc)

Founder of a newsletter (2 years): I wrote a dialy newsletter about markets and sent it out every single morning for 2 years - built an audience of over 15,000 engaged subs with an open rate of over 60% and a total of 40 million impressions across my newsletter + linkedin posts

Founder of a marketing agency(2 years): I started and scaled a marketing agency from 0->$9K MRR and hired 4 full-time freelance employees for it. We were basically professional ghostwriters.

Intern at decently big bank (summer): i built a python options pricer that used monte carlo simulations and black scholes model to price OTC option products on local stocks

Intern at a YC-backed startup (another summer): worked at a company that has raised $25mn+ in its lifetime, helped the product team analyse other investment applications on the market and pick out the features that users enjoyed the best.

Intern at another startup (another summer!): Worked at India’s 2nd biggest fintech company at the time, worth $3bn ish, I helped in building out their credit risk assesment platform and doing some diligence on potential NPAs.

Cricket Team: School cricket team… play as a bowler

School clubs: I was in/head of our schools investment soc, keynes soc (economics), rubiks cube club soc, etc and was also a school prefect

Awards:

UK Mathematics trust maths challenge, won 2 gold medals 2 years back to back

Won the best in the year Computer science award

Part of my country’s economics olympiad bootcamp

T1: Economics teacher, not very close with her, she’s only taught me for the last 2 years, but she’s a killer teacher and knows that I’m decent. 8/10

T2: Compsci teacher, once again, shes only taught me for the last 2 years but she writes glowing recommendations from what I’ve heard 9/10

Love you folks

[Publisher]

Go to each school’s website and look over the courses offered, then decide where to apply early.

[merc81]

If you would like an idea for your greater college list, Williams is very strong in development economics.

[thumper1]

Do you want to live in Philadelphia or New Haven…check that too.

[happy1]

I do not suggest asking people on a blog who don’t know you to recommend applying early to one excellent school over another. Look at the curriculum, location, housing, etc. at the two schools and choose the better fit to apply early.

I will note that there is more of an advantage applying ED (Penn) as compared to REA (Yale) but that should not override fit. You have a strong background but both are extremely tough admits.