Zach Yadegari, the 18-year-old who runs $30M startup, has been rejected by several Ivy League schools and other top American universities. This incident has sparked a major debate on the internet. Yadegari is the founder and CEO of a nutrition-tracking app Cal AI. His app allows people to track calories by taking pictures of their food and business. 

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Despite a Grade Point Average (GPA) of 4.0 and an impressive 34 ACT (American College Testing) score – a test score for admissions in college in the US and Canada, Yadegari has failed to secure admission to USA's top universities including Havard, Yale, and Princeton and Columbia University. In a post on X, Yadegari shared a long list of colleges where he was rejected. 

Out of the 18 colleges he applied to, only three - the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), and the University of Miami (UMiami) - accepted him. 

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Zach Yadegari's college rejection post has gone viral

His post went viral with over 11.9 million views. Apart from Ivy League colleges, top universities like Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Duke University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Southern California (USC), Washington University (WashU), New York University (NYU), and the University of Virginia (UVA) also rejected his application.  

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The New York-based entrepreneur also shared his college admission essay and tagged Tesla giant Elon Musk. In the essay, Yadegari wrote how he had taught himself coding at the age of 7. At 10, he began charging $30 per hour for lessons and at 14, he built a gaming website that earned $60,000 annually. By the time he was 16-year-old, he had achieved a six-figure business exit. He also explained his decision to forgo traditional education in favour of real-world experience, moving to San Francisco to build Cal AI. Terming YouTube as his "personal tutor", he said that it taught him "everything from programming to filing LLC taxes".

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His essay was criticised by many on the internet. Read his personal statement below:

 

(With inputs from agencies)