Southeast Asian $300k profit business owner [43 IB, 1550 SAT, EE]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Preface
I have a pretty unique profile with lots of extenuating circumstances, so I’m curious where I stand with regards to my reach schools. Would love to hear your thoughts!

Demographics:

  • Gender: Male
  • Type of school: International (IB), class size 70

Intended Major(s): Electrical Engineering

SAT: Superscore - 1550 (800M, 750R)

UW/W GPA and Rank:

Senior year: 43/45 IB DP
Junior year: 40-42/45
Sophomore year: 6.125/7 IB MYP average
Freshman year: 86.6/100 average. Part of middle school in my country, and school had no syllabus. They also didn’t return any grades or gave any feedback. The school is a mess.

Coursework:

  • Math AA HL (7)
  • Physics HL (7)
  • Economics HL (7)
  • Chemistry SL (7)
  • English Lang/Lit SL (6)
  • Indonesian Lang/Lit SL (6)
  • TOK (A)
  • EE in Physics (A)
  • Linear algebra (21-241) @ CMU (A)
  • CS (15-112) @ CMU (A)

Awards:

  • School-level Physics, Econ, TOK award (11)
  • SE Asia Math Olympiad Bronze (12)
  • Speaker at seminar alongside CEO of largest cryptocurrency exchange in my country (9)

Extracurriculars:

  • Sole Proprietorship - $300k profit; developed plug-and-play crypto miners and remote monitoring dashboard for 70+ customers; maximized electricity efficiency and ROI
  • Work (Security Advisor) - Found & fixed company infrastructure vulnerabilities exposing SSNs of >23k users; overhauled security infrastructure; ensured compliance w/ regs
  • Automation Software Developer - Pioneered automated investment mgmt tool w/ reverse engineering; managed $2.4m w/ 1% fee; created tool to improve transparency of investment flow
  • Vibration Detection Project - Created math analysis tool for industrial equipment vibrations w/ Fourier transform & linear algebra; designed IoT abnormality monitoring tool
  • Service Trip Leader - Empowered 50+ Indonesians via entrepreneurial upskilling; brought complaints to policymakers; connected 20+ Canadian students to Indonesian issues
  • (redacted) Seller - Started venture importing goods for 63 customers; $50k revenue; prepared formal import documents; studied customs law; provided aftersales support
  • Leader - Rebuilt 3 family homes w/ club members; conducted proactive outreach; led fundraising initiatives; collaborated w/ community to meet their needs
  • Other random, less meaningful stuff

Essays:

Won’t rate because I’m obviously biased towards myself, but they shed some light onto my business and other ECs. According to a current UPenn M&T student that’s been asked to review essays for transfer students this year, my Penn essays read like other admitted student essays.

I talked about my experience innovating in cryptocurrency miners, transforming them from this inaccessible and technical beast into something that’s accessible by everyone. I articulated upon making my products plug-and-play, something that nobody else thought of doing. This resulted in a drastic increase in sales, and I connected it to the importance of UX alongside engineering, and how business and engineering go hand-in-hand to innovate. I later mention how I want to apply this in the semiconductor industry, creating cheap and accessible semiconductor fabrication equipment.

LORs:

  • Physics teacher - known for 1.5 years. Was my EE supervisor. Got an A for my EE. Knows about my academic/personal goals and my personality.
  • Econ teacher - known for a year. Lots of insightful conversations.
  • CMU Linear Algebra professor - known for 6 weeks. Got an A in his class and was offered a LoR by him. Says I “deserve to be at CMU more than most of the undergrads”. Only submitting to CMU and Penn

Other:

  • 2h15m commute to school daily
  • Financially supported family for about a year: paid bills, bought car, paid tuition, will pay for own college. Parents were unemployed during freshman-sophomore year

Schools:
Fortunately I’m able to go full-pay on all of them and didn’t apply for aid (except for MIT which is need-blind) because of my business, but obviously cheaper is better.

  • UPenn M&T (Engineering + Wharton dual-degree RD)
  • CMU (RD)
  • Duke (RD)
  • Northwestern (RD)
  • Cornell (RD)
  • MIT (RD)
  • Caltech (RD)
  • UCLA
  • UC Berkeley MET
  • Other targets and safeties omitted for brevity
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As you know…your whole list of colleges is comprised of reach schools. You might get accepted and you might not. As an international student, your chances of acceptance are about half of what the school says its acceptance rate is. @skieurope do I have that right?

So at this point, just wait and see.

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I’m a little confused by your strategy. A need blind school will not know you are full pay…which could actually help you. And you didn’t apply for aid at the need aware schools…where likely you will be full pay and they will just have to assume so.

And with your business income…I’m not sure how you will get “cheaper”.

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Yes, unless the university is need-blind as explained below

Not necessarily. When a school is need-blind for internationals, everyone and his brother applies. The numerator (accepted internationals) never increases, but the denominator (international applicants) goes through the roof. So the MIT international acceptance rate is roughly 25% of the total rate.

Since state schools like UCLA (and some privates like CMU) don’t give international aid, not applying for aid isn’t an advantage.

And Penn’s M&T acceptance rate is microscopic, but if rejected, you may be offered a spot in SEAS.

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As I mentioned in my post, that is not my entire list. I have other targets and safeties I didn’t mention, some of which I’ve gotten acceptances from.

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I think you’re missing the point. The point is that I won’t be subject to the bloodbath of competing for international aid funds at need-aware schools. Obviously, schools that are cheaper (i.e. have a lower cost of attendance) are better (who wouldn’t want to save money?)

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If you think “cheaper is better”, this list is not a good one.

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Those two UCs at full pay are about $15000 “cheaper” than some of the other colleges on this list that are near $90,000 a year.

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Congrats on the acceptances you have, and good luck with the ones you’re waiting on. “Chance me” posts never actually end up as “you have this percent likelihood of getting in” when looking at uber-selective schools (even AOs can’t give odds like that), as much as they’re “here’s where I’m applying; am I good?” — to which the answer is almost invariably “uh, no, you have no targets or likelies” … so the way this thread has gone was about how these things go. As @thumper1 mentioned upthread, decision dates are close enough (and other application windows are closed enough) that at this point waiting to see how it goes is probably best.

With your interest in EE and entrepreneurship, I’m curious why you didn’t apply to Stanford as well?

Good luck with the outstanding applications! Please report back with how it all shakes out in the end.

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Thanks for the super helpful reply!

I applied to and was rejected Stanford REA, but I didn’t know I had to emphasize my entrepreneurship. So my essays were all over the place, and I couldn’t emphasize any of the cool things I did.

No worries though, it was a learning opportunity for RD schools, and I had someone look over my RD essays (something I didn’t do with my earlies)!

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I’m so glad you were able to learn from that process and use it to refine your RD applications! A lot of people get thrown when EA doesn’t go the way they hope it will; I’m glad you were able to regroup and get some extra input. Good luck with the next phase!

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