The landscape of college admissions has grown fiercely competitive, even for high-achieving students. Highlighting this issue, 18-year-old entrepreneur Zach Yadegari, the founder and CEO of the nutrition tracking app Cal AI, recently shared his experience of being rejected by several top-tier American universities.
Taking to X, Yadegari penned an open letter, further listing the colleges that denied him admission while also acknowledging the ones that accepted him.
Posted on April 3, it had gained over a million views on the social media platform X.
Stellar achievements of no use?
Based in New York, the young millionaire failed to gain entry into prestigious universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), among others, despite his multimillion-dollar business, and exceptional academic credentials.
In his post, Yadegari highlighted his impressive profile: a 34 ACT score, a 4.0 GPA, and a start-up generating $30 million (approximately Rs 3 crores) in annual revenue.
The list of universities that rejected him includes Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, University of Washington (WashU), Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Duke, University of Southern California (USC), University of Virginia (UVA), New York University (NYU), Brown, Vanderbilt, and Cornell.
However, he secured admission to Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), the University of Texas, and the University of Miami.
Millionaire since his teens
He detailed his journey as a self-taught coder, starting at age 7 and launching his first app by 12. At 16, he achieved a six-figure exit from an online gaming business. Choosing real-world experience over traditional education, he moved to San Francisco to develop Cal AI, an AI-powered app for tracking calories from food images, which became the fastest-growing in its category and amassed millions in revenue.
Despite his financial success and the encouragement of investors and mentors who believed college was unnecessary, Yadegari felt a void. In his essay, he wrote, “College, I came to realize, is more than a mere rite of passage. It is the conduit to elevate the work I have always done. In this next chapter, I want to learn from humans – both professors and students – not just from computers or textbooks.”
Open letter
Yadegari penned an open letter expressing his frustration with the college admissions system, questioning whether elite universities still value such metrics. He emphasised his journey as a self-taught coder and child prodigy, yet criticised the selection process for prioritising “diversity over merit, adversity over excellence, and circumstances over capability.
Calling for greater transparency, he labeled the current system as “un-American” and urged for fairness in admissions, concluding his letter with the statement, “Make admissions fair again.”
Netizens react
Some people praised his achievements, with one user commenting, “Insanity, any institution would be lucky to have you. The admissions officer reading your app was probably jealous.”
Others questioned his motivations, asking, “What’s your main motivation to still go to college when you’ve already done more than a lot of full-time professionals?”
Many also commented that perhaps his entitlement could be the reason for the rejection.