Chance me for my reaches!
Outskirts of San Antonio, white male. I received the collegeboard National Recognition award for rural and small town students.
Major: Economics. I noted wherever I could that I am far more interested in public policy or academia than corporate finance or investment banking, as I think that sets me apart from a lot of other applicants. I wrote my personal statement about my interest in the economy and how I want to make great contributions to its study and understanding.
Rank: 9/500 - UW/W: 97.5/101.5
SAT: 1490 (1 attempt) 720 Math / 770 Reading
9 APS, 3 OnRamps (UT College-level course), 2 Honors, all advanced classes where AP or OnRamps was not available at my school.
Letters of Rec:
OnRamps US History teacher - I know she wrote something fantastic + personal, and I essentially always led discussion and helped other students as much as I could.
AP Stats teacher - known him all my life. We used to do stage performances together for the kids at my old church.
AP English teacher - We fs liked each other, though idk how much she could write about me aside from very social + extroverted nature.
My Mentor (see below)- LOVE THIS GUY. I’m sure he wrote something very nice about me.
Dartmouth peer recommendation was my friend Maddox. We have a great relationship, and we’ve taken a lot of APs together.
Extracurriculars:
Mentored under retired Senior Portfolio Manager current professor for a year, met weekly to learn from him + work together to build a dividend-valuation based portfolio. This year, I’m mentoring under an entire branch of a very large fixed income investment company. I meet with the heads of the research department, trading department, investor relations, and certain workers from each. I did this all on my own. I didn’t use any school or familial resources.
Recreational Leader at local assisted living home. I began as the regular bingo caller, but soon was allowed to create and host my own events for the residents. Had a close relationship with all of them. (5hrs/week)
Multi-Instrumentalist - I play drums, guitar, and have 1000+ hours of experience working with synthesizers. I release + market my own music.
Writer- I’m always working on my writing; I’ve released one fantasy novel and dozens of poems. I’m working on my next one right now.
President of Chess Club
Investor- managing the portfolio created between me and my first mentor, I’ve doubled the S&P for three quarters straight. Our algorithm is REALLY good guys.
Game development- Fluent in JS, Lua, and decent with C#. I’ve programmed 2 of my own games.
Church Leader- aforementioned religious service. I perform and lead activities for 20-50 kids maybe once or twice a month. Done this for like 8 years.
Interviews in chronological order:
MIT- In-person. Went very well. We got along and I gave off very sweet + social. Standard good interview.
Penn- did NOT go well. The guy was very “serious businessperson” so we didn’t match.
Rice- similar to Dartmouth. We talked a lot about theology and Christian life on campus.
Dartmouth - Absolutely amazing. Probably about as good as an interview could possibly get. She said I was a perfect fit for Dartmouth, and that she hadn’t ever written as many notes for a candidate before.
Princeton- scheduled.
Essays: Personal statement is fine, supplementals are usually great. (Particularly for Yale/Princeton/rice they were awesome.)
Note: I continually changed and improved my application from summer to January. My worst applications were UT, Penn, and UTSA, and my best were Yale, Princeton, and Rice.
My colleges:
UTSA
UT Austin (McCombs)
UMich (Ross)
MIT (Course 15)
Northwestern (Lots of demonstrated interest)
Dartmouth
Rice
Yale
Princeton
Penn (Rejected)