<p>The bottom line is you can turn in a perfect application with no mistakes and exemplary credentials and still be deferred or, in your case, outright rejected. Your stats are 1000 times better than mine and I got accepted. Go figure.</p>
<p>You can't figure this stuff out. We don't have the opportunity to sit in the admissions meetings so we can't really say what Penn does or doesn't want in a prospective student. Maybe you were overqualified, as someone in this thread suggested earlier. Someone who's running a successful business by the time he is in high school probably doesn't need an education in business. The Penn admissions officers probably figured your time would be better spent furthering your business ventures rather than dominating a business school that is intended for people who are learning about the concepts behind running a successful business, not those who already understand and excel at them.</p>
<p>Let me retierate that last point; the bottom line is that Penn is a school. Looking at your credentials, I am confident that you would finish near or at the top of any business course. You probably wouldn't even have to put in that much effort, since you understand most of it anyway. So what's the point of going to Wharton when you're already prepared enough to run a successful business? Why wait any longer?</p>
<p>I understand that to a certain extent, but aren't schools supposed to accept their most successful/apt applicants? I mean in my applications to other schools (should have done this for Wharton, but now it's too late) I talked about how I hadn't formally learned the principles of business, which is why I wanted to go to business school. Yes, I know how to find a market and promote my business in that market, but I hardly know anything about going public, merging, accounting, and other concepts.</p>
<p>That's the main reason I want to go to business school -- aside from the prestige of whatever university I attend. At the end of the day, no one takes you seriously unless you've gone to college. And if I'm going to go to college, I'd rather have it be the #1 B-school rather than #20. Not to mention Penn would allow me to pursue other areas of interests (such as language, which I mentioned in my essay).</p>
<p>Oh well, not much else to do... just sucks that we didn't have one of these threads earlier :(</p>
<p>Another Business Owner: International Contact Lens Trade business (not a kid-toy thing. I participated to Chinese Optical Fair and attached my business brochure as supplementary data.)
But I got admitted to Huntsman program. I agree to "feikuai"'s idea that Wharton is still a SCHOOL. I emphasized how Wharton experience and Huntsman program will make me ready for my next business venture.</p>
<p>There's no explaining why you were rejected - look at the other rejections and you'll see there were plenty of people who were fantastically qualified. It would be equally (in)valid to blame it on your horoscope sign. They just plain get too many qualified apps for too few (unhooked) spots and have to pick and choose among them almost randomly. They could probably switch all the people they took with the top of the reject pile and have an equally qualified class. Actually, given all the preference admits in the admitted pool, at this point the top of the reject/defer pool is probably BETTER qualified objectively. That's just how it is - there's no point in seeking explanations because there aren't any beyond what I just said. Sure they have a process for accepting/rejecting but basically they are just fooling themselves as much as they are fooling you. The fact that nobody can find any rational pattern for the "unhooked" is proof of this.</p>
<p>Regarding MIT, you said," I was thinking about MIT but have heard most of its students are simply unhappy there." This is WAAY too sweeping of a generalization (BTW, to contradict what I said before, I detected almost a note of arrogance/overconfidence in what you wrote, of which that quote is an example - the admissions office may have picked up on this and disliked it. Maybe in certain business circles this kind of confident style has value but as others have pointed out, Wharton is academia and not the real business world, where scientific precision and modesty is valued over bluster and even more, Wharton doesn't have it's own admissions staff - there is only one admissions office and it is staffed by the usual post-modern PC rainbow types who don't really respond well to that style at all.) There have been a few isolated news stories about people at MIT killing themselves (in fact the suicide rate there is comparable to other campuses) but basically these are stories about people who were deeply mentally disturbed before they ever set foot at MIT. Of course MIT is a really intense place but the people there really seem to love it and thrive on it. My big beef w/ MIT's business program is that everyone at MIT takes the same program freshman year. This has two effects: the start of your business education is delayed until sophomore year and in the meantime you are in the same killer physics, etc. courses as the future physics majors.</p>
<p>were i an admissions officer i would probably think the applicant was exaggerating. a 18 yr old with a marketing firm that represents kanye west??</p>
<p>sorry, that just sounds like maybe you have some google ads on your blog that link to their homepages - but that's just what i would think if i were looking at your app. </p>
<p>maybe you really are legit (in which case you shouldn't be going to college), but the same principles apply to resume page limits as an undergrad (i'm a junior@penn applying to internships). if you have more than 1 page, you'll get thrown out - how can a 20 yr old possibly have more information than a page?</p>
<p>ok now I feel like I'm just whining at this point. My counselor is calling to figure out what the reasons might be for my rejection... I really made a conscious effort in my apps NOT to come off as arrogant (I am not an arrogant person, but when you are pitching your accomplishments it is often easy to sound like one)</p>
<p>thanks for your input everyone, and good luck wherever you end up going!</p>
<p>don't know how you got hooked up, but that's some sick connections.</p>
<p>get him to sing a song for you (about you having the talent and not getting in etc etc) and put it on you tube / send it to news (CNN, etc) - they're always reporting on youtube human interest movies.</p>
<p>not only will you be on the news, wharton will take you in 5 seconds, and if you don't get in there, youll be in Sloan in 10 seconds</p>
<p>i'm also a small business owner who got rejected from wharton. I have a 3.7 UW gpa, top 3% of my class, a 1440 SAT, and in my essay i spoke about how i wrote an entire business plan, then i presented it to potential investors and now i co-own, and run my own LLC that brought in almost 50k last year. Apparantly they weren't impressed lol i was rejected too :/ It's not like that was my only EC, i'm going to graduate with 7 varsity letters, i'm a volunteer firefighter, president of a couple clubs. I don't understand what they're looking if that couldn't even buy me a deferral.</p>
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Oh, and to seXYboy07, before you write my comment off as "moronic," you might want to sift through the decisions thread and find the student who had 15 5s on APs, 3 major companies, a stellar GPA, a 2390, and was rejected from Penn early.
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<p>Man I definitely couldn't get into Penn if I applied now. Scary.</p>
<p>to drew really the only possible reason I can think for you getting rejected is that they considered you too successful. I know it sounds pretty dumb but that website looks pretty amazing and maybe they just thought you were on a level above them(i know sounds false) and were maybe well suited pursuing undergraduate studies in some other field not directly related to business....dont know how this makes sense but its really the only thing i can think of, also thats pretty cool that you worked with all those guys, and once again cant believe you got rejected</p>
<p>Just make sure you're applying to either school for the right reasons. If you want to study business, go to Wharton. For general ed, go to CAS. Prestige shouldn't be a deciding factor.</p>
<p>why should you not be considering the prestige? Academics are usually proportional to prestige and also in the future I want people recognize me as a person who went to an ellite school where 1% of the leaders in America are produced - ivy league</p>