Posted on 04/10/2025 6:13:55 AM PDT by DFG
An 18-year-old with a near-perfect GPA founded a business that made $30 million in its first year — but that isn’t enough to woo college counselors these days.
At least that’s Zach Yadegari’s experience as he was rejected by 15 out of the 18 schools he applied to, despite a 4.0 GPA and score of 34 on the ACT.
The 18-year-old business founder shared his string of college rejections to X, where the post racked up more than 27 million views — with many shocked by elite higher ed’s apparent allergy to the entrepreneurial spirit.
“I didn’t expect to be accepted to all of these colleges, however, I did expect to at least be accepted to a couple of the top schools I was applying to,” Yadegari told The Post. “I think that entrepreneurial accomplishments may not be fully appreciated.”
The Rosslyn, New York, public schooler is already a self-made success before graduation. He learned to code at age 7, was giving lessons at age 10, and had an app in the App Store by age 12.
In his junior year, Yadegari founded Cal AI, an app that calculates how many calories are in a meal just by snapping a picture. It now makes tens of millions a year.
Nonetheless, the teen applied early to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was rejected.
During the regular decision round, he was turned down by Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, Washington University in St. Louis, Columbia, Princeton, Duke, USC, the University of Virginia, NYU, Vanderbilt, Brown, and Cornell.
“I held out hope for Stanford, but then when I opened their rejection letter, all of the prior rejections just flooded in and really hit me at once,” the Roslyn High School senior said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
They don’t want robots that can think for themselves.
Kid has dodged some 15 bullets.
A business? That reeks of capitalism and perhaps even MAGA. We must protect colleges from such thinking. < /I wish it was sarcasm>
Is there an unmentioned ‘red flag’?
Outside that, what a disgrace. Although I’d argue, you don’t need them kid!
I’d be curious how accurate his app is - it’s a great idea...which is often the hardest part, and you’re not going to learn that in college.
But Harvard has implemented remedial math class for new students. How can they have remedial math when they reject amazing students like this. It may in the end come back to haunt those students who are really not qualified to be there. Not being able to do the work or after graduation not being able to succeed. Then again some people of questionable qualifications did go onto great things like running the country.
?
Why in the world does he want a college degree?
Does he really need to go to college? I think not. His grades were good, but now a days, kids are getting 4.27 and higher due to advanced placement classes.
The picture of him explains a lot.
Basically he at least looks like a white male, that is automatically a disqualifier unless you somehow claim a victim status within the alphabet group.
It's mentioned, but the red flag is his personal statement. It has "future dropout" written all over it and gives very vague reasons for going to college. I was surprised how bad it was.
Some colleges reject honest smart people. We are not living in 1962
Yes, he's white.
And he probably wanted to meet young women. Otherwise, what’s he doing going backwards into college now?
He looks white, and he’s probably not gay
There’s two strikes right there.
Colleges have done more to demonstrate they are worthless in the last 2 years then any number of trade school and apprenticeship advocates have been able to achieve in 30+ years.
Now that the light has been shined upon their operations that have existed since the 60’s and all the battles over Federal funding, Title IX and unrepentant protests shutting down schools people are going… “Wait, what?”
I would never recommend anyone like this go to college. I’m sure even Texas, Miami and GT might be too eager to suck the life out of him.
Zach, you don’t need college. You’re already more successful than any tenured professor or college president in this country. If anything they’ll try to make you feel guilty of your success and being the genius you clearly are at this young age!
Nothing on SAT score that I can find...maybe he’s not quite as smart as they want us to believe?
When I was in engineering college I always thought if I were already rich I could have majored in something interesting but not lucrative like history or philosophy. I enjoyed the debates when I took those classes as electives.
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