Chance Me: TX student who wants to be an investment banker (1480, 3.7) [not top 10% rank, <$40k parent contribution]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics: Southeast Asian, US PR, TX resident, public HS, male, athlete (not recruited), parents went to foreign universities

Intended Major: Finance/business/econ

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.74
  • College GPA (dual enrollment): 4.0
  • Class size: 940+
  • Class Rank: NA cuz school only ranks top 10%
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1480, took June SAT and hoping for 1500+, will update :slight_smile:

Coursework
6 APs, 3 IBs, 15 DE

  • AP Hug - 5
  • AP World - 5
  • AP Gov, AP Macro, AP Precal - Awaiting score
  • AP Stats - Senior year (was going to take AP Chinese for my 4th foreign language credit but couldn’t due to a scheduling conflict)
  • IB Enviro, IB English - Awaiting score
  • DE - Calc 1 and 2, Accounting 1 and 2, Microecon, Business 101, US History, TX Govt, etc
  • Senior year classes - IB English, AP Stats, Precalculus (DE), Accounting 1 (DE), Calc 1 (DE), Accounting 2 (DE), Calc 2 (DE), Speech (DE), TX Govt (DE), ASL (DE)

Awards
Nothing spectacular for this. NHS, honor roll, AP scholar w distinction, I have a 1470 psat so will probably get National Merit Commended. My SSI is 218 and the cutoff last year was 219 :frowning:

Extracurriculars
*HS Swim - varsity captain (12th) + mentor (11th and 12th) 9, 10, 11, 12
*Digital media content creator - sports content, 16k+ followers, 15M views, worked w/ amateur athletes and other blogs 10, 11, 12
*Citys chamber of commerce - on the board of directors 11, 12
*Summer swim team - 7x state finalist, hardest worker award 9, 10, 12
*water polo - team captain 10, 11, 12
*chinese club - treasurer 9, 10, 11, 12
*swim lessons instructor and lifeguard 12
*events volunteer and social media video producer - helped plan events w/ 80+ attendees 9, 10, 11, 12
*taekwondo black belt and instructor - 3rd place at nationals 9 (competed from age 7-14)
*residential summer program + case competition 12 - one week

Essays/LORs/Other
Idk, essay will likely be good by then.

Cost Constraints / Budget
Parents willing to pay 40k a year. Of course, the cheaper the better. Will try and get as much scholarship money as possible. Willing to take on debt for a good school.

Schools

Reach: I understand I’ll likely get rejected by all of these schools, just need one to say yes tho
Cornell University
UPenn
Harvard
Columbia
Georgetown
UT Austin
Notre Dame
Michigan
USC EA
Emory
U Of Florida EA

Match:
Texas A&M
SMU
IU EA
Ohio State EA
Georgia EA

Safety
UT Dallas

Questions:

  1. What do y’all think of the list? I know it’s a little top heavy. If you have any school recommendations, please let me know, I’m open to switching it up :slight_smile:
  2. What do you think of the order of my activities?
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Applying to more doesn’t necessarily give you better odds - but good luck. You have a fine profile.

Does your HS show a weighted GPA? If it does and it’s above a 3.8, then IU will be a safety for Kelley. If it doesn’t, then you’d have to petition for direct admit I believe. But it won’t come close to your budget - so in that sense it’s a reach because nothing worse than getting into a school you can’t afford.

I like your list - top heavy doesn’t matter if you have affordable and attainable schools. You definitely have attainable - but are they affordable? Will address later. Assuming your list doesn’t have affordable schools, then it’s not a good list.

I would list your activities by Importance to you - not by some formula you are trying to maximize. You might group the swimming together so it’s not going back and forth - as you have 4 or 5 swimming related activities.

So the $40K is a HUGE issue. Your wanting to take on debt is a HUGE issue - and fortunately the government protects you by only allowing you to borrow $27K over 4 years, including just $5500 the first year.

So a lot of your list is need based aid only. So - have your folks fill out the net price calculator for each - to see if you qualify for need aid. If Columbia is $90K - so if your family doesn’t qualify for need, you need to remove it - and be glad. Imagine if you borrowed $100K - you can’t but your parents could. You’d owe over $1200 a month for the next ten years - before your rent, cars, and everything else, etc.

ASU is probably a better fit than UF - 1. It’ll be closer to budget and 2. They appear to have success with IB - of course, likely not an easy program to gain entry to. Miami of Ohio has Farmer School - and it’s another that’s likely within budget. Ohio State might have an outside chance of hitting budget so I like it. UMN is another - and don’t forgo UH Bauer School. They have the IBSC - Investment Banking Scholar Club - and you’d be in state.

So no matter what you do - stay within budget. Yes, if you decide to try and become a banker (do you know what that means?) - it will be harder - but you’ll know you won’t be bankrupt.

Again, best of luck - but please run the NPC for Columbia (below) and you can google others to help determine the viability of your list.

Investment Banking Industry Scholars | ASU W. P. Carey

Welcome | Net Price Calculator (collegeboard.org)

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How will these colleges meet your $40,000 a year price point? Also, Michigan doesn’t meet full need for OOS students. So it could be unaffordable also. University of FL is $45,000 or so a year for the upcoming academic year.

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Texas A&M will be affordable (COA is $31k), but yes - the others won’t be, especially Michigan which is $73k.

@trid, it is very hard to get into IB from any school other than the super reaches on your list. How much do you know about IB careers?

Tagging @Catcherinthetoast to get his input.

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SMU seems like a match school (to me) academically. If this student wants to work in IB in the greater Dallas area, this might be a decent choice…if he or she is accepted. but cost of attendance is over $83,000 a year…now.

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Texas A&M isn’t a Match-especially for Mays Business-unless you are Top Ten%. Yes, SAT will definitely help, but Mays fills up fast with auto admit.
I do think you’ll get accepted to A&M, but unless rank is 1st quarter, you could get 2nd choice major…and you may not get holistic admit until January.

Be ready to apply in the first week of August-have LOR, transcript, essay, etc ready.
Do NOT wait to apply any later!

SMU won’t give you enough $$ to bring budget down to $40k a year.

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Perhaps I missed this, but has the OP run the NPCs at any schools of interest? Do we know they aren’t eligible for need-based aid at the schools that offer it?

@trid if you’ve not done so, ask your parents to run the NPCs at 3-4 of the schools on your long list. Try Harvard, UPenn, SMU, Emory as a start and let us know if they are affordable.

That is the first step. Once we know what may be affordable we can offer better suggestions for your academic and career goals.

You will have options! We just need more info to help you tailor a list that is realistic financially and realistically logistically for time-consuming applications.

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Three traditional paths to IB summer internships and eventual full time analyst jobs are as follows…

  1. Attend 1 of 6 ivies (or other elites like Duke/Stanford/ Chicago) that don’t have business or finance majors and concentrate on Econ or other humanities major. Engage heavily in on campus finance related organizations. Start building network early and take advantage of traditional “target” school resources and access. You will be facing steep competition amongst peers but most IBs have a large number of slots available for this cohort. Study whatever raises your intellectual curiosity just be prepared to speak to its creation of transferable skills such as problem solving, communication, etc.

  2. Attend a premier institution that has a business or finance concentration. Think Stern, Dyson, Wharton, Cox, Gabelli, Ross, etc. Make sure you get very good relative grades and catch the attention of professors. Day one start looking for internship and know you are competing with everyone around you. Take advantage of traditional “target” school resources and access but you will need to find a way to stand out.

  3. Attend a top tier “feeder” LAC. Think Williams, Amherst, Hamilton, W&L and major (primarily in Econ) or other humanities areas of interest. You will need to be proactive and likely will have fewer finance organizations to participate in. You may be at a target school but with no on campus recruitment. Seek out alumni aggressively and early. You may have to articulate a narrative as to why you choose this path.

None of these approaches are necessarily better or more likely to succeed but they do offer a very different college experience. Does one sound more appealing OP? You seem to have a mix in your list but would suggest narrowing it down based on which of the three learning and community environments is most appealing.

FYI of course there are other ways to get to IB but these 3 are by far the most frequent.

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They’re reaches though, so don’t expect any to say yes.

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Note that these “elite” business majors may be additionally competitive for admission compared to the school overall, or may have secondary admission if you enroll at the school but not in the business major.

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  1. Yea my weighted GPA is over 3.8 so that’s nice to know.
  2. Net price for Columbia came out to around 55k a year. I think I’d definitely be willing to take on about 60k debt.
  3. I’ve heard of the program at ASU. The reason I chose UF over it is because I really liked UF’s combined Masters In Finance program, where you get an MSF in your 4th year.
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Yea I know these will be expensive, but 5k a year debt is not that bad. Do you know the chances of me getting merit aid as an OOS? I’m guessing it’s probably low.

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Yea I know it’ll be hard. That’s why I have a bunch of targets/semi targets on my list. If I cant get into a target, I’ll try and work my butt off networking, getting a high gpa, internships, etc. I’ve done lots of research and I do really think this is what I want to do, but hey maybe that’ll change.

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You can’t take more than about $28k TOTAL in debt. You get about $5500 your first year, $6500 your second year, and then $7500 for years three and four. So you CAN’T get $60k in debt, unless your parents cosign.

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It’s definitely expensive but I like their alts program. Also, I had a friend get in with similar stats and he got merit aid that pushed is price down to about $30-35k

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$50,000 in merit aid? Really? Well…apply and see.

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Yea I didn’t believe him at first either haha

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Will do! Thanks for the tips!

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You won’t be able to take this amount in loans unless your parents co-sign. Are they on board with that? Or your parents could take out loans. But really…$240,000 in loans for undergrad is way too high…regardless of your future job. You would be looking at $2700 or so a month in loan payments for 10 years.

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Congratulations on building a strong profile in high school!

Below are my guesses as to what your chances might be at these schools:

Extremely Likely (80-99+%)

  • IU
  • Ohio State
  • UT – Dallas

Likely (60-79%)

  • SMU

Toss-Up (40-59%)

  • Texas A&M (honestly unsure)

Lower Probability (20-39%)

  • Georgia

Low Probability (less than 20%)

  • Cornell
  • UPenn
  • Harvard
  • Columbia
  • Georgetown
  • Michigan
  • UT Austin
  • Notre Dame
  • USC
  • Emory
  • U. of Florida

If Columbia came back as $55k, then you can probably eliminate the first five schools I listed in the low probability category (though you could check out Harvard’s NPC, as it is likely to be more generous than Columbia). Those schools don’t offer merit aid (and Michigan is highly unlikely to provide sufficient merit aid either). UT and U. of Florida would be your best chances at getting an affordable school in the low probability bucket, but the privates on the latter half of the list do offer merit aid, so it’s not impossible that they’d reach your budget price.

I’m not an IB specialist, but I’d potentially consider Fairfield (CT), Providence (RI), Trinity U (TX), and Texas Christian as possibilities where there’s the odds of admission are greater and where there may be a bit more of a path to IB than at some other schools (though I will yield to @Catcherinthetoast’s far superior knowledge on the subject). Also, you might want to check out U. of Houston as well.

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