Should You “Start An Organization” For Elite College Admissions?

Starting a business or organization may sound like an obvious way to stand out at top colleges, but merely founding something is very different from building something successful enough to matter.In this episode, we examine nine often-overlooked downsides of student-run ventures, from low risk-adjusted returns and predictable applicant positioning to parental involvement, weak execution, and the “chronicle of incompetence” an unfinished online presence can create.We explore stronger alternatives to starting from scratch and the traits that make entrepreneurship a better bet—including intrinsic motivation, action bias, executive functioning, existing momentum, and the ability to build a real team.——“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2025–26 application cycle.Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).Web: greatmindsadvising.comContact: greatmindsadvising.com/#contactNewsletter: greatmindsadvising.com/#newsletterEmail: [email protected]: facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising/IG: instagram.com/greatmindsadvising