Long Island Prodigy Zach Yadegari Rewrites the College Narrative After Ivy League Rejections — Finds New Path at University of Miami

By: Ariella Haviv

At just 18 years old, Zach Yadegari of Roslyn, New York, has already achieved what most adults spend decades striving for — launching a wildly successful tech venture valued at over $30 million. But despite his astronomical accomplishments, this straight-A student and founder of the calorie-counting app Cal AI received rejection letters from nearly every elite college he applied to, including all eight Ivy League universities. As The New York Post reported on Thursday, Yadegari’s story is less a tale of rejection than a challenge to the very foundation of modern college admissions.

On April 30, Yadegari shared a pivotal update with his 45,300 followers on X (formerly Twitter): “Update: I officially committed to Umiami.” That announcement marked the end of a turbulent and deeply personal admissions journey for a teen whose GPA (4.0) and ACT score (34) might once have guaranteed admission into America’s top institutions. But as The New York Post report emphasized, Yadegari’s path underscores a growing disconnect between entrepreneurial success and traditional academic acceptance.

Yadegari, a self-taught coder who launched his first app at the age of 12, developed Cal AI in 2024 — a cutting-edge app that uses artificial intelligence to calculate the calorie content of a meal simply by analyzing a photograph. According to information provided in The New York Post report, the app’s massive success quickly turned Yadegari into a millionaire before he ever stepped foot on a college campus.

Yet his success outside the classroom was not enough for the Ivy League. In March, Yadegari publicly revealed that he had been rejected by 15 of the 18 schools he applied to. The list included not only Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the rest of the Ivy League, but also MIT, Stanford, Duke, NYU, Vanderbilt, the University of Virginia, USC, and Washington University in St. Louis.

In an interview with Fox News, later referenced by The Post, Yadegari questioned whether college admissions offices are prepared to evaluate unconventional candidates: “I think that college admissions tries to place students in this rubric, a very tight box, that makes it difficult for students with achievements outside of school, like an entrepreneur, to really stand out.”

Despite being propelled toward a lucrative tech career, Yadegari told The New York Post that his decision to pursue college was deeply personal. “I’m 18, I want to hang out with other 18-year-olds. I don’t want to go straight into the business world just yet,” he said.

He added that while he never expected acceptance from every top-tier school, “I did expect to at least be accepted to a couple of the top schools I was applying to… I think that entrepreneurial accomplishments may not be fully appreciated.”

Only the University of Miami, Georgia Tech, and the University of Texas extended offers of admission. But the sting of rejection, Yadegari admitted to The Post, didn’t fully settle in until Stanford sent its decision. “I held out hope for Stanford, but then when I opened their rejection letter, all of the prior rejections just flooded in and really hit me at once,” he shared.

In a personal essay that resonated widely after his college news went viral, Yadegari reflected on the societal pressure he faced — not just from teachers and parents, but from venture capitalists and tech mentors eager to mold him into the next college dropout success story.

“In my rejection of the collegiate path, I had unwittingly bound myself to another framework of expectations: the archetypal dropout founder,” he wrote, as was cited in The Post report. “Instead of schoolteachers, it was VCs and mentors steering me toward a direction that was still not my own.”

Yadegari ultimately concluded that his next chapter would not be written in isolation behind a screen but in classrooms and dorms filled with his peers. “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,” he explained in language that showed both humility and introspection.

As the report in The New York Post noted, Yadegari’s journey has sparked a wider public conversation about what the American higher education system values — and what it might be overlooking. With the rise of alternative credentialing, online learning, and youth entrepreneurship, traditional academic metrics may be losing relevance for a generation of students reared on innovation and independence.

His decision to attend the University of Miami, while perhaps unexpected given his résumé, has already been met with widespread support on social media. Yadegari’s experience may prove to be a bellwether moment, exposing the fissures in an admissions model ill-equipped to measure the full spectrum of talent emerging from today’s high schools.

n the meantime, Zach Yadegari heads to South Florida this fall not just with a backpack and a dream, but with a multimillion-dollar company under his belt and an entire generation of aspiring innovators watching closely.