Chance an international with a low GPA for business

UChicago is probably a waste of your ED2. Only 1% of their admits are below the top 10% of their HS graduating class; and your 1470 is 25th percentile for admitted students there. Add the disadvantage of applying internationally to this and it’s an implausible choice - plus, I don’t really see the fit between their undergraduate focus and your interests. You have very impressive EC’s and work experience (how old are you?) but you need schools where a measurable number of students with less-than-perfect stats are getting in.

Consider Claremont McKenna as an alternative. It has a Science Management major that would combine your interests nicely. They’re still an elite school (single-digit overall acceptance rate) but they give very heavy preference to ED applicants (28% ED acceptance rate). They have about the same percentage of international undergraduates as Chicago, and the top 25% of the class has very high stats, but the stat spread is larger (73% of admits are in the top 10% of their HS class and 93% in the top quarter. This in part because of athletic recruitment, and you’re not an athletic recruit… but there’s still more daylight to be seen here in terms of considering students with less-than-perfect grades. Also, your 1470 is in the top 25% at CMC, which is what you will need to compensate for your GPA.)

CMC is part of the Claremont Consortium, so you’d be able to register freely for classes at Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and Scripps in addition to CMC’s course offerings. It’s the most business-oriented of the 5 schools (CMC Econ is particularly elite and the only department that is essentially closed to cross-registration from the other schools) and also the most ED-friendly.

NYU Stern is a reach for sure, but a good choice in terms of being international-friendly and swayed by full-pay within that pool. Same with USC. Another worth considering in this category is Northeastern.

I don’t think you have a meaningful chance at Stanford. In terms of UC’s, if you’re doing the application anyway, I’d add Irvine and Riverside (the only others with undergrad business schools)… but the fact that UC’s won’t be considering standardized tests at all in the coming cycle will not help you.

Additional schools to consider, that take a high percentage of international students and depend on full-pay international dollars to balance their budgets (but are also highly ranked and well-regarded): University of Rochester, and Brandeis University. URoch has both a BS in Business (with multiple tracks) and a BA in Business that is specifically for double-majors (i.e. Business+Biology). The Brandeis business major (which has a secondary admissions process once there) also “strongly encourages” joint majors.

Since you like Georgetown and BC, consider Santa Clara as well - another Jesuit school that’s only a notch below BC in competitiveness, and has the advantage of Silicon Valley ties for internships.

You sound like a really interesting and accomplished applicant. You just need to find the sweet spot admissions-wise. The large publics where admissions are heavily GPA-driven will be hard to crack, whereas your unusual record will impress schools that are more holistic, so long as they’re not such high reaches that near-perfect stats are the first filter and “holistic” only happens within that pool.

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