The most recent Wharton admit I know ran a “dog-walking business” for folks in the neighborhood whose pets had gotten used to having them around during Covid lockdown but were slowly all going back into an office and no longer working from home.
It wasn’t Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Nvidia. Just a HS kid doing normal HS things- putting up flyers in the dry cleaners and bagel store, adjusting his prices when he realized he’d have no profit margin once he started recruiting older neighbors to help because he had school commitments during the day and needed to pay them.
What he DID have was superlative academics. Which I think is a factor folks ignore when talking about Wharton where being on the “future investment bankers of America even though I’m only 15” track seems to be the perception. You can still get into Wharton with strong rigor, signs of intellectual curiosity, and some sort of exposure to “commerce”- kid raises his prices on his garage cleanout business because the town dump increased the price of a permit? That’s an EXCELLENT essay.