A high school teen behind an AI app generating $30 million in annual revenue just got rejected by 15 top colleges, including Ivy League schools like Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton. Tens of thousands of commentators on X are sure that it was his personal statement that got in the way.
Zach Yadegari, the 18-year-old co-founder of the photo calorie app Cal AI, shared his experience with college admissions last week in a post on X. Yadegari disclosed that he had a 4.0 GPA and a 34 ACT score. ACT scores are reported out of a maximum of 36; Yadegari’s score places him among the top 5% of test takers.
He also had his app, Cal AI, as a project that he shared with colleges. Cal AI allows users to take a picture of the food on their plate and have the app automatically log the meal’s calories and macronutrients. Yadegari released Cal AI in May, and in the eight months since its launch, the app has garnered over five million downloads and more than $2 million in monthly revenue, he told TechCrunch.
Cal AI has a 4.8-star rating on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, with at least 80,000 reviews on each store.
Despite Yadegari’s achievements, he was rejected from 15 of the 18 schools he applied to, with only Georgia Tech, the University of Texas, and the University of Miami extending him acceptances. Yadegari posted screenshots of his personal statement, which described how he went from coding at the age of 7 to building Cal AI and interviewing his first employee to work on the app.
The essay overarchingly tracked how Yadegari went from vowing to never attend college to wanting to attend university to connect with other students.
“College, I came to realize, is more than a mere right of passage,” he wrote. “It is the conduit to elevate the work I have always done.”
A user on X commented that Yadegari’s personal statement signaled to admissions officers he would likely drop out.
“Personal statement indicates that you’re a high probability to drop out,” they wrote. “So they gave your spot to someone that actually wants to graduate college.”
Over 20,000 other X users liked the comment.
personal statement indicates that you’re a high probability to drop out
so they gave your spot to someone that actually wants to graduate college
— WPA ?? (@warpaul) April 1, 2025
College applications to top schools have been on the rise. The New York Times reports that the Ivy-Plus schools, or the eight Ivy League colleges plus MIT, Duke, the University of Chicago, and Stanford, received more than triple the number of applications in 2022 than they did two decades prior.
As of January, applications to colleges rose 7% compared to last year at the same time. More than 1.2 million high school students applied to college this year, submitting 6.7 million applications to colleges, according to Common App data.
Average SAT scores have also slightly inched up over the past three decades. In 1994, the average score was 1,003, while in 2024, the average score was 1,024, per PrepScholar.
Yadegari told TechCrunch that at the end of the day, he isn’t sure why he was rejected from so many schools. He’s still figuring out what he plans to do.
“Ultimately, I’ll never know exactly why I was turned down,” he told the publication.
Another X user asked why Yadegari wanted to go to college when he had already had professional experiences.
“My motivation [for] going to college is just to have a social life,” Yadegari replied.
This article is part of our ongoing Young Entrepreneur® series highlighting the stories, challenges and triumphs of being a young business owner.
