Advice for 22 YO Non-Target Recent Graduate with 3.95 GPA and Military Experience

Hello all,

I would first like to give a HUGE thank you to everyone who actively uses this forum! I recently stumbled upon it and have been reading countless threads over the past few days. I am amazed with how much helpful information I have found on WSO and somewhat upset I did not come across it earlier.

To tell you a little bit about myself:
I graduated high school as salutatorian but was unable to get into target schools at a price that my family could afford. (I come from a single family home with ~$45k annual income). This month I completed my undergrad at a small, non-target, private school in New York that I commuted to. I graduated with a 3.95 GPA in Business Administration & Management, and was the only Summa Cum Laude graduate in the business division. I won some decent awards from my school and local associations, and was invited to join a few decent honor societies.

I joined the Army Reserve my sophomore year of college because I have always wanted to serve, I received a bonus that I have since invested successfully, and because I knew it would help bolster my resume. For the military, I completed 7 months of training, and was the distinguished honor graduate and class leader of my engineer class. I started as the lowest enlisted rank in the Army and it has taught me more life lessons than I could have ever imagined.

The Cons: I do not have any internships on my resume. The only work experience I have is in retail and engineering. My school is not very renown in the business realm and does not have many connections to places in NYC despite only being a few hours from there. I was supposed to go on a deployment out of college so I did not focus on applying for any career jobs since I was supposed to be gone for a minimum of 10 months. That deployment has since been pushed back and I now do not have a "career" job lined up.

I originally did not want to work anywhere close to NYC, but I have recently realized that an hour train ride into the city is worth it because the amount of opportunity down there is endless. I have always had an interest in markets, but do not have the same level of specific knowledge that the kids coming out of Ivy-League schools do. Although I have the heart to stack-up against them.

From the age of ten or so, I have been "flipping" things on eBay to make money in my free time. I have targeted a specific market where I am able to buy items in their "off-season" and sell them several months later when they are peaking "in-season." Although this market is very small and is not big enough to make a living on, I have been able to make enough to pay off most of my student loans. The profit margins on these transactions range anywhere from 4% to 250% with an average transaction of about $200. I would love to do something like this on a larger scale but I am not sure how.

All of this said, what advice would you give me? Is there any job that you would recommend for me based on what I mentioned as one of my interests in the paragraph above?

Thank you so much for reading my post. It means alot!