Scott Galloway achieved grades primarily in the B and C range throughout his secondary education, did not prepare for the SAT, and required two attempts to gain admission to UCLA. Currently, his net worth stands at $150 million.

The professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, who is also an entrepreneur, a best-selling author (having recently released his newest book Notes on Being a Man), and a podcaster, stated that he was a talented student in the third grade, so much so that he was sent to attend math and English classes with fifth-graders. 

“[I was] supposedly smarter than everyone else at our level,” Galloway wrote in a personal memoir excerpt published by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “I also was an all-star pitcher. There was promise.”

Following his parents' separation, his academic performance declined, and he abandoned athletic pursuits. During his secondary education, he achieved predominantly B and C grades and mentioned he did not prepare for the SAT, he noted, yet he still submitted an application to the University of California—Los Angeles (UCLA). He got an 1130 on the SAT, significantly below the threshold for elite institutions, and was rejected by UCLA (among only 24% of candidates then who were not accepted). Subsequently, he secured employment installing shelving, earning $18 per hour. 

“I came home one day and I was just so upset,” he said during a talk at the University of Chicago. “My whole life people had told me I was creative and I was smart and I was funny and the rest of it.”

This situation persisted until he and his mother learned about an avenue for reconsideration to gain admission to UCLA. He underwent an interview at UCLA with an admissions representative, who informed him that he did not meet the necessary qualifications for attendance, but accepted him anyway due to his status as a “native son of California.” Galloway was born in New York City, but spent most of his upbringing in the Los Angeles region.

“Because they had a lot of seats relative to the number of applicants, they had the bandwidth to let in unremarkable kids,” Galloway said. “And this is a flex, and I’m going to make it.”

Now, Galloway is worth $150 million, and in the past five years has given back $16 million to UCLA, he said. 

“It’s worked out for all of us,” Galloway said of his unique admissions process. “No institution or individual can recognize or be the arbiter of greatness in an 18-year-old.” 

That experience has also shaped Galloway’s conviction that universities ought to be providing “as many kids a shot as possible.” 

However, he's also stated that advanced learning has transformed from a societal benefit into an exclusive, limited-supply enterprise that urgently requires a complete restructuring. Consider UCLA, for instance; its acceptance percentage was 70% when Galloway submitted his application, but currently, it stands at a mere 9% admission rate, he noted during the told the Brief But Spectacular interview series. 

“Unless you are in one of two cohorts—those being the children of rich people who can afford test prep, who have friends that can nudge the admissions committee or wealthy donors to give a second or third look to the application; or two, you’re part of a cohort that I would affectionately refer to as freakishly remarkable—you’re not getting the same opportunities as my generation had,” he said. 

And he's right to say so: Statistics indicate that gaining admission to university is significantly more challenging now than it was two decades ago. For instance, the acceptance percentage for Harvard’s 1995 freshman class was 11.8%, as reported by KD College Prep. For the current cohort of new students, the acceptance rate was just 4.2%.

“Higher education represents a dangerous trend in America where we’ve fallen out of love with the remarkables,” Galloway said. “We’ve decided our economy is a platform to turn the top 1% into billionaires. And that’s not what America is about.”