I was wondering as it was missing a letter. Thx
Ugh. Yep out of touch. Thx
Seems he likes Penn more. I’d ED there. Need aware does not mean won’t get in (for that reason).
Can your parents afford 34-40k?
This is actually not bad and may help.
If they can, yes apply ED1.
Just to be clear: these schools do not provide scholarships—they only provide need based financial aid. If your family’s finances are all US based then the NPC should be fairly correct.
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The #1 college in the country for entrepreneurship is Babson College, a small, 2700 student college outside Boston. It is part of a 3-college consortium with Wellesley College and Olin College of Engineering, all interconnected by a shuttle bus. While Babson is a business-focused college, you can pick up a minor in Math or Physics, which you mentioned earlier, at Wellesley.
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Chiming in to say that Washington and Lee University has an undergraduate business school, is need blind for international admissions, and meets full need of internationals without loans.
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OP- you sound like an interesting person and a great student. But majoring in finance really doesn’t give you an advantage to starting and running a successful business. Bill Gates didn’t become successful because he knew how to do a discounted cash flow analysis. Steve Jobs didn’t become successful because he aced his class in currency arbitrage.
If you really want to start and run a business, major in pretty much anything and read voraciously. Figure out a gap- any gap- between what exists in the world (product, service, combination of both) and figure out if there are people willing to pay for a solution to that gap.
You don’t need finance. You need psychology and history and art/design and sociology and yes, math and physics, and urban planning and political science. Learn about the world and the people in it. Your entrepreneurial instincts will kick in at some point. If finance is already a passion, you don’t need to double down.
There is a fascinating interview out there with Bill Gates after one of the early products became a runaway success. He was asked about the “great insight” that led to the product and the launch. I don’t remember any of this verbatim, but he credited his “great insight” to hire anthropologists, linguists, psychologists and sociologists to join the team. He had plenty of technical talent, but there weren’t enough people at the company at that time who understood how people think, how people communicate, how people work together (or not), how groups form. So early software packages were designed by technology folks to be used by other technology folks. His insights led to products that were “user friendly”, i.e. understood intuitively by people who had zero experience in IT or CS.
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This reminds me a little of a paper I read after the subprime crisis (possibly by Darrel Duffie but I may misremember) talking about how the quants had modeled risk on the securities - where they were largely physics PhDs or similar who understood everything quant-related, but did not understand how human behavior would affect things once house prices began falling, which meant the market reacted totally differently from how they had modeled it. Some insight from a psychologist or behavioral economist would have been very useful … (of course just one of many things that caused/exacerbated the crisis, but to the same point that you need more than just technical understanding)
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I remember that article- or at least the dozens that followed!
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Yes, My family can manage 30-40k.
It’s more so a convo. of, Are my EC’s Course load, and Essays good enough for a solid chance at ED Wharton?
Yes, you have a chance at an admission to Wharton ED. Is it a solid chance? Probably not, but your chances are as good as any other non hooked international applicant with similar stats. So if Wharton is the dream and you’ve already determined it to be affordable, shoot your shot. Good luck to you!
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What is a solid chance to you?
You are absolutely a great candidate. But so are thousands of other applicants. Surely you can fall in love with another 20 schools or so that are less competitive to be admitted to than Wharton!
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Is there anything I can do to make it a Solid chance? I still have 5-6 months until apps.
Not sure what a solid chance is to me. I guess if I’m a standout amongst the international pool? Or if i just have a solid chance honestly.
Well, you can’t change your immigration status in that time; you can’t redo your HS career in that time; you can’t somehow tell hundreds of other HS students “Wharton is a terrible place don’t apply”.
So you can only control what you can control, i.e. find a few more solid options!
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what could be some other options?
Strong finance programs (if you’re committed to that)-
Villanova
BC
NYU Stern
Schools which punch above their weight in Finance/Wall Street hiring (which is probably not your interest if you want to be an entrepreneur, but that’s for you to figure out)
Fordham
Wesleyan (great place for creative, artistic kids who also want to study math, physics)
Swarthmore
Lehigh
Pure “mathy” type schools-
Harvey Mudd
Rice
Rutgers
NYU Arts and Science (so a math or physics major, not finance which is housed in the business program)
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If you’re interested in the space industry, then forming relationships in areas where the space industry is prominent is one strategy that could make a lot of sense. Top of mind is Texas and Florida, but also Seattle, L.A., and D.C. Whether a minor in physics or math is sufficient background to form a company working in the industry, I will leave to others.
How much is your family willing and able to afford per year, without loans? As Penn’s NPC is showing a $60k grant, that makes me think that your family is unable to pay $90k/year without loans.
In developing some recommendations of schools, I did refer to these two rankings of undergraduate entrepreneurship programs (and some comments from Poets & Quants on those articles). I realize you’ve expressed an interest in majoring in finance, but if you hope to form your own company, it seems that strong entrepreneurship programs could also be beneficial for your interests. Please note that I am using these rankings not as this school is better than the next school and that the order is correct, but that these are schools that are well-regarded via different methodologies for their strength in this area.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/business-entrepreneurship
Below are some schools that you may want to consider, sorted by my guesses as to your chances for admission:
Extremely Likely (80-99+%)
- Baylor (TX)
- U. of Houston…extremely well-regarded for its entrepreneurship programs
- U. of Texas - Dallas
- Texas Christian
Likely (60-79%)
- Bentley (MA)
- Santa Clara (CA)
- U. of Maryland
Toss-Up (40-59%)
- Loyola Marymount (CA)
Lower Probability (20-39%)
- Babson (MA)
Low Probability (less than 20%)
- Wash U. (MO)
- Rice (TX)
- All the schools on your current list, with the possible exception of UT, to which I would speak to your high school counselor
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The acceptance rate for Babson fell to 17% for this year’s freshman class.
The acceptance rate at Maryland was 45%, but the out of state acceptance rate was only 35%.
Just trying to supply some additional information for what I thought was a really helpful post. 
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Thanks for letting me know! Although my guesses about categorization definitely start from a school’s overall admit rate, a particular candidate’s profile might make a school more or less likely than the overall admit rate when I make my guesses. 
I still think that with the strength of OP’s background that Babson would be a lower probability admit, but perhaps Maryland would be better in the toss-up category.
Appreciate you sharing the updated info!
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OP seems fixed on Penn and Harvard and I wonder if anything else matters.
That said, they are seeking to do their own thing - and the where will likely matter less.
Of course, it’s often great to start out doing something, to build up that rolodex…gotta get funding!!
I have a feeling this is the typical anything but those two is a let down.
I hope not.
They seem driven.
That’s going to drive their career, not Harvard or Penn.