{"id":11894,"date":"2025-04-11T21:36:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T21:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/11894\/"},"modified":"2025-04-11T21:36:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T21:36:10","slug":"he-built-a-30m-business-at-18-and-still-got-15-college-rejection-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/11894\/","title":{"rendered":"He built a $30M business at 18 \u2014 and still got 15 college rejection letters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"He Yadegari, a public school student from Roslyn, New York, had an early start. He began coding at age 7, was teaching lessons by 10, and had an app in the App Store by 12. Then, in his junior year of high school, he founded Cal AI, an app that can identify the calorie content of meals using images. The tool took off \u2014 fast.
\u201cOne million dollars of revenue. In the last 30 days \u2026 Was this hedonistic treadmill of capitalism what the rest of my life was designated for? \u2026 In the rejection of the collegiate path, I had unwittingly bound myself to another framework of expectations: The archetypal dropout founder,\u201d he wrote in his college essay.
Despite building a multimillion-dollar business and creating jobs, Yadegari\u2019s untraditional path didn\u2019t seem to earn him favor with elite admissions offices.<\/p>\n

Poll<\/p>\n

Do you believe that college is still essential for success in today’s world?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m convicted in my belief that the admissions offices are not adequately weighting building a company and opening up jobs compared to other extracurricular activities such as volunteer work,\u201d he said.
Zach Yadegari seemed like the kind of applicant any top university would jump at: a 4.0 GPA, a 34 on the ACT, and a wildly successful startup under his belt \u2014 one that generated $30 million in its first year.
But when college decisions rolled in, the 18-year-old tech entrepreneur was stunned: he\u2019d been rejected by 15 of the 18 schools he applied to, including nearly every elite institution in the country.
\u201cI didn\u2019t 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,\u201d Yadegari told The New York Post. \u201cI think that entrepreneurial accomplishments may not be fully appreciated.\u201d
\"2\"
Yadegari applied early to the University of Pennsylvania \u2014 and was denied. Then came the rejections from Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Duke, Brown, Cornell, and others. In total, 15 rejection letters.
\u201cI 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,\u201d he said.
Eventually, he was accepted by just three schools: Georgia Tech, the University of Miami, and the University of Texas.
Alongside his admissions results, Yadegari shared his college essay on X (formerly Twitter), where his post received over 27 million views. In the piece, he reflected on how his perspective toward higher education had evolved.
\u201cI began my own journey fiercely independent, determined to forge my own path,\u201d he wrote. \u201cNow, I see that individuality and connection are not opposites, but complements \u2026 In this next chapter, I want to learn from humans \u2014 both professors and students \u2014 not just from computers or textbooks.\u201d
\"3\"<\/p>\n

Credit: X\/@zach_yadegari<\/p>\n

Online debate erupts
People were naturally perplexed by the situation, but some tried to console him. One said, \u201cChin-up, Zach. Consider yourself lucky to have dodged the bullet of so-called elite universities. @GeorgiaTech produces top engineers and entrepreneurs. Hit me up if you chose Atlanta as your home for the next 4 years. Bonus: vibrant #chabad community.\u201d
Another wrote, \u201cWow this is so insane. Also just curious what\u2019s your main motivation to still go to college when you\u2019ve already done more than a lot of full time professionals?\u201d
However, few others pointed out why the colleges might have rejected him. One argued, \u201cpersonal statement indicates that you\u2019re a high probability to drop out so they gave your spot to someone that actually wants to graduate college.\u201d
Another said, \u201cYour essays were smug and condescending. Congrats on the business though. College would be a waste of time unless you\u2019re trying to party.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yadegari, a public school student from Roslyn, New York, had an early start. He began coding at age…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3094],"tags":[51,8140,8139,3134,8138,16,15,8137,8136],"class_list":{"0":"post-11894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cal-ai","10":"tag-college-rejections","11":"tag-entrepreneurship","12":"tag-tech-entrepreneur","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-university-admissions","16":"tag-zach-yadegari"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114321488851018523","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}