Intended Major(s) Finance/Business with a combo of CS where available (Basically wanna try to go into Investment Banking)
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted HS GPA: 3.6 (3.2 In Freshman year brings it down a ton for COVID reasons, GPA shoots up in 10th and 11th)
Weighted HS GPA: 4.5 (+1 for Honors and AP classes)
Class Rank: No ranking at school*
ACT/SAT Scores: 1560 SAT*
NMSF
List your HS coursework
16 AP Classes with 4s and 5s, Multiple Post-AP Math classes after Calc BC is 9th grade, rest are all honors apart from 9th and 10th Spanish classes which don’t offer Honors
Awards
3rd place U21 in USA National Championship for Racquet Sport (non-D1)*
1st Place in International Harvard Case Competition (~8000 participants)*
2x First Place in State Stock Market Game (~500 participants)*
Top 10 Finalists in International Finance Competition (~1000 participants)*
3x MLH Hackathon First Place (~1000 participants)
USACO Silver*
Extracurriculars Racquet Sport: Bronze Medal in National Championship in U21 Bracket, Coach youth players and help train professional Team USA athletes Columnist at major Financial Publication: Published 75+ stock recommendation articles seen by millions of people on sites like Yahoo Finance, NASDAQ Finance and Investment Club President: 3 Years, teach financial concepts and help train for national and international competitions, many of which we win U.S. Head and Global Marketing Head of International Non-Profit: 2 Years, Focused on Fitness and Physical Health, orchestrated recruitment of thousands of members in 70 countries, helped publish 2 books and a research paper, recognized by multiple global humanitarian organizations Editor-in-Chief of Economics Magazine/News Site: 100+ articles edited, head of the writing department and helped develop the website as well Morgan Stanley Internship: Merit internship, 2 months ongoing Ongoing Financial Independent Research: Working on it for 6 months and looking to publish soon, working with 2 professors from T5 Business Schools Personal Initiative: In whatever free time I have, I make online stores and websites for small Ukrainian Business Owners for 10% equity on online sales, personal project helping out 9 businesses so far Hackathons: 1st place in 3 MLH Hackathons and top 3 in 5 others, won some decent money but mostly free lifetime subscriptions and stuff E-commerce business: Yea, I just did dropshipping. Made $5k so ig it worked but I didn’t find it meaningful tbh so I didn’t continue it further Random Summer Internship at small local business NYU Investment Banking Workshop: 1 week, nothing crazy Red Cross Club: Just a member
Essays/LORs/Other I think my Common App essay is a 9/10. It sounds sophisticated and like the stuff u see on TikTok. Both LOR are probably gonna be like an 8 or 9/10 - I have pretty good relationships with both teachers
Schools
I don’t need to apply to any other safeties because I would much rather go in-state for ASU where there is a somewhat decent Investment Banking program
Assured: ASU Barrett (strong connections in IBIS program and 100% think I can get in that)*
Extremely Likely: IU Kelley
Likely: Fordham Gabelli(I heard they have a pretty generous NMSF scholarship?)
Lower Probability: GeorgiaTech, WUSTL
Low Probability: NYU Stern ED, UPenn Wharton, GTown, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, ND, UMich Ross, UT Austin CSB, Yale, Princeton, UC Hicago, Duke, Berkeley Haas, UCLA, USC, UVA, BC, NW, Vandy, MIT, CMU, Stanford, Dartmouth, Emory, Brown (Shotgunning to get in at least 1)
I’m not a huge fan of shotgunning and think it can end up counterproductive, and unless I am wrong you are not qualified for an automatic admission to Kelley so will need to do a review request. But as long as you are OK with ASU then none of that is really critical.
One question–you say less than $90K, but I believe Stern is now about $95K, and yet you are planning to ED to Stern which means you are committing to pay whatever it costs if accepted. So I wonder what the plan is for that scenario.
Freshman year was 2021-22, correct? Was your high school still doing remote school for that year? Or, do you mean you had covid that year that brought down your grades? What is your approximate class rank? (even if your school doesn’t rank, you should know this…for example, at some schools a 3.6 could easily be in the second quartile, at others that could even be in the third quartile. In either case, you would likely have virtually no chance at the reach schools on your list.)
You have a strong profile, but your GPA is low for most of the schools on your list. Many don’t have a finance/business major either…what’s your plan for those schools?
Shotgunning is unlikely to increase your chance of admission, and it will be difficult to do so many apps well, with many supplemental essays. I would encourage you to drop some reaches and add some targets. Maybe consider Bentley and/or Bryant.
Your EC “paragraph” above is very hard to read. Could you edit that to be bullets or something? I tried, and it looks like a lot of hit and run to me…a long list…thinking “more is better”. But I could be missing the connections there…because it’s hard to read.
You’ll get into IU. I’m not sure Kelley. If your transcript shows the weighted 4.5, then yes as they take the highest gpa on the transcript. If not you’ll have to petition. Same with IBIS as the average student is well above you GPA wise and they have a 15% acceptance.
These aren’t the only schools you can get into IB from but they are many of the top.
Consider adding SMU, Rutgers, and if your family wants to pursue the NMSF/F gold you have several others that would bring your price to $0-20. And yes there are examples of kids, maybe not a ton, who secure IB type roles.
It’s a tough field even at high level schools but I think other than IU (not Kelley unless the transcript shows that 4.5), ASU, and Fordham, you are unlikely everywhere. But you can only attend one - and those are three good ones.
I think all of the colleges in my list have some kind of Business or Finance majors, apart from the Ivy Leagues, for which I will probably apply for Econ
Well none of these come remotely close to IU Kelley or even ASU I’m pretty sure those 2 are all I need
I did consider SMU, but I went to Dallas recently and didn’t really like the vibe on campus, it kinda felt like an LAC which isn’t something that I’m really into. Also, Rutgers and those other kinds of schools wouldn’t be better for me over ASU in-state.
I know Berkeley is very hard to get into, especially Haas, but would I at least have a chance at UCLA since they don’t calculate Freshman Year grades, which would take my UW GPA to around a 3.85?
I would pursue an area of academic interest versus one that you think will appeal to future employers in a specific industry.
I am sure you are aware that more then half the people employed at investment banks aren’t bankers. Those that are “bankers” have extremely diverse day to day responsibilities with extremely varied backgrounds. For example the commodities trader, M&A deal maker and equity capital market professional aren’t looking for analysts with the same background, personalities or interests.
If you have a specific area of banking I may be able to offer suggestions but “shot gunning” with an econ or generic finance background from a non target school will very rarely work.
IB recruiting is very specific, nuanced and a bit idiosyncratic. I would strongly suggest you ensure the advice (on CC and elsewhere) that you follow comes from IB professionals or those who have first hand IB experience.
IB is not an area to hope to be the “exceptional case”, as most are the product of a back story you can’t replicate.
That is your opinion and I don’t disagree. But, IMO ASU IBIS is a reach, and Bentley and Bryant > ASU without IBIS. As tsbna said, IU Kelley is a safety if your wGPA is on your transcript. If not I would say you will get into IU and have to go the standard admit route for Kelley.
The advice I got from a lot of professionals in IB/PE is that my extracurriculars are the only thing that might possibly get me into a target school, and the only majors that could possibly align with that apart from Finance/Business would be Econ or possibly something related to journalism and writing, which I do enjoy but wouldn’t want to study for 4 years in college.
To get into IBIS my HS GPA wouldn’t matter anymore and I have 2 very good friends from my school in IBIS, so I’m fairly certain that I could get in if I maintain a 4.0 freshman year which shouldn’t be too hard. And yes my weighted GPA is on my transcript so I should be fine for a Direct Admit.
I’ll admit their criteria always confuse me. They say you need a 3.8 on a 4.0 scale. They also say they will use weighted if your school reports it. But is a 4.5 weighted on a 4.0 scale?
Anyway, though, if you are in fact a direct admit to Kelley, then that reinforces the point that even if shotgunning is a suboptimal strategy, that is not a critical observation if you are OK with Kelley and ASU.
Well that’s why I’m shotgunning in the first place. I’m already expecting to go to ASU or IU Kelley so I won’t have any regrets getting rejected from every reach by shotgunning because chances are that I wouldn’t get in anyways even if I applied to a couple T10s and spent more time on each application. Just because my UW GPA was bad (mostly due to my school making me take AP Calc BC in 9th grade as well as 15 other science and history APs that I have 0 interest in) doesn’t mean I can’t at least give it a shot for n stead of just settling for ASU.
If you are legitimately interested and passionate about the study of economics, absolutely go for it.
If however you are at a non target school, I would consider the following. About 60% of those applying for IB analyst roles from the 6 non B school ivies and all top LACs are going to be Econ majors. You will have a hard time standing out and likely loose in head to head comparisons.
I know you discounted SMU but an advantage of a school like SMU is that it has a deep local cache and an alumni network that works to its advantage. Alternatively, if you want to be a commodities banker or trader a background in geology or other sciences might make you a good candidate. Interested in being a quant then prove your mathematical abilities by what you study, want a fixed income sales role become a religion major because debating the existence of a benevolent G-d is a lot harder than selling a corporate bond. In each case you offer something a bit unique that will hopefully get the IB recruiters to at least want to have a conversation with you.
My point is you can’t be a “generic” student from a “generic” school. You will unfortunately need to make some decisions fairly early in your academic career if your ambition is IB in my experience.