Major: Finance
Universities (favorite to least): UPenn, Cornell, NYU, UVA, UMich, Carnegie, Notre Dame, Emory, Boston College, USC, UNC and Madison.
About myself:
- Age: 20
- Citizenship: US, German (I grew up in Germany)
- Residence: CA
- Gender: Male
- Race: White
- I have a GED
Community College:
- CC: Orange Coast College
- Major: Business Administration
- GPA: 4.00 (I had one W in my first semester)
- Credits: 58 in Spring
- Honors Societies: 6+
- I completed all the Prerequisites for all the Universities
Additional Factors:
- SAT: 1270: Schools that require the SAT: UPenn, UVA, Boston College, Notre Dame and possibly UNC.
- Toefl: 29-29-26-23
- Need based financial aid: No
- Recommendations: English and either Math, or Economics.
- Personal Essay: Very strong
Extra-curricular:
- I invest on my own. My profits for the last year were about $100,000 and in percentages it was about a 50% gain. I have extensive knowledge in stocks, options and the basics of futures and Forex.
- My friend and I had a pretty decent network, in which we exchanged our thoughts and ideas.
- Volunteering in Germany.
- Foreign Exchange to the US (7th and 11th grade)
- Internship at a Computer Store (back when I was into Video Games…)
- I also participated in a business club for a while, but no leadership positions.
My weaknesses:
- My Sat in general and my TOEFL writing score: I hope that having a very strong recommendation from my English teacher will help out. She knows a little bit about my situation and likes to support students, who use community college as an opportunity to make up for old mistakes. This also ties into my personal essay.
- High-School: I graduated with a GED. I basically only took one year of high-school and my highest GPA was between 2.3-3.0. I did explain this pretty thoroughly in my application. Lastly, I was suspended for three days during my high-school year, because I was caught with alcohol on campus. That was about 4 years ago (seems like a lifetime).
- Extra-curricular? I don’t know how strong or weak I am. I believe my investing experience is very helpful, but I don’t have much going for me besides that. No proper internships, leadership positions or volunteering.
My strengths:
- GPA: I know my GPA is strong, but I see a lot of other students on here that have the same stats, so I feel like it’ll take more than just this. Especially with those acceptance rates.
- Essay: My essay builds a lot on my past mistakes and hardships. In middle-school I was bullied and my father passed away soon afterwards. After those experiences I basically gave up on school, because I didn’t feel safe and didn’t know what I wanted to do in the first place. After briefly explaining those experiences, I wrote about how and why I have changed and what my aspirations are. Lastly, I elaborated why I want to transfer away from community college.
- Recommendation: I feel very comfortable with my recommendations. I think this will help me a lot.
- My investing experience: I didn’t write numbers into the application, but I did mention that I will be paying for the majority, if not all, of my tuition purely from my profits.
I don’t think that I am a typical applicant and that makes me even more nervous. On one hand, I might stand out, but I don’t have the perfect academic history many other students have.