Marine trying to get into target schools

Good afternoon ladies and gentleman. I am currently an enlisted infantry Marine with around a year and a half left before I either get out or reenlist as basically an accountant for the Marine Corps. I am currently studying to retake my SAT with the hopes of getting admitted into as many Ivies/Target schools possible so I can break into investment banking. I have already signed up with Service2School and they told me they can't help me until the start of my admissions process. 

The real question I have is what can I do besides get a good SAT score to improve my odds of admittance. I already have some accolades and awards plus a couple hundred hours of volunteering. What other ECs can I achieve to beef up my application and how can I prepare for a potential career in IB with regards to where I'm at currently.

I understand this isn't really a college admittance sub, but my intention is to ultimately end up in IB so I thought posting here would be the best course of action. 

Best Regards,

GDP 

12 Comments
 

Some ideas:

Publish investment research (assuming you are applying for business/finance)
Start some sort of philanthropic initiative - might be more impactful than just volunteering for an existing organization

You could also focus on applying to schools that especially value admitting veterans (fairly sure that is the case for UCs if you are from California)

Good luck

 
Most Helpful

Feel free to DM me, I went through your process and got a solid school. I’m just gonna list out what I did/think you should do and go from there. If you already have it feel free to scratch it off.

To do:
Before the process starts
•Community college (at least a year but some is better then none) aim for 3.7 or higher
•start working on your basics (algebra, trig, basic grammatical stuff) a lot of us haven’t done school in a longgg time
•check out warrior scholar project, they help you get prepared on some of these topics as well as help you find your weaker points for schooling

During the application process:
•Email admissions for veterans, this single helped me get into multiple top colleges. They want to hear your story.
•work with S2S counselor on essays and app. Also try and find kids at that school that can help too. We vets are at almost any school.
•find decent backup schools, doesn’t mean bad schools just schools with around 20-30% acceptance rates. I know Notre Dame and Brown are looking to bump vet admissions


I would say these are some of the things I did and helped me get in. Feel free to DM me if you have questions and also if you know your schools your interested in I can put you in contact with vets at that school most likely.

 

This is massive, I always knew of warrior scholar project but I never knew what they specifically did. Thank you for the advice. I'll DM you so we can keep chatting, I'd love to hear your story. 

 

Should def shoot your shot at Stanford, they love veterans. From personal experience, vast majority of transfer/non-traditional students on campus are former military.
 

It might seem like a long shot, but I think you have a better chance than you think. Good luck man.

 

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