@bipolarbear thanks for the question.
Let's start with the first comment: We don't "want" people to do anything at all. Or wait, that's not correct: We want people to not make the same mistakes that we've seen hundreds of others make before. But we don't "want" you to do anything in particular with your goals. They are YOUR GOALS. Your applications. Your life. We don't actually care. Nobody should be writing an essay to please EssaySnark.
Just to set that straight.
It's impossible to say whether starting an investment fund would be too ambitious for YOU because we don't know your profile - but almost every single case where we see that goal, it's totally unsubstantiated. It's just an idea that the BSer is throwing out. It's really not viable at all.
But honestly? If you think that starting a fund isn't "that ambitious"? Well.....
Sure, people start investment funds -
we did a whole series of posts on this sort of thing recently - but it's a) totally unusual to pull it off, you seem not to have an appreciation for what's involved, and pointing to examples where people did it before doesn't prove that just anyone (or you) can do it, an exception does not prove a rule; and at the same time, b) it's totally common for people to claim this in their essays.
That is not a good combination of facts.
We have devoted almost five years of the
EssaySnark blahg to discussing this issue so we're not going to rehash all of it here. If you're applying to Stanford then we encourage you to buy our
Stanford essay guide which answers these questions.
Next we will remind you that our tweets yesterday and this weekend are "an actual line of feedback that we've given to some BSer or another" - we're only tweeting stuff that's relevant to others, but we say this particular line about starting a fund etc. so often that yes, it's relevant. But we weren't saying it to YOU so maybe you are indeed the exception. No idea.
What we will say is goals are never boring when they are authentic. They are YOURS. If you present yourself well in your application, you're sharing who you are and what you really want to do. How can that be boring?
And we will also reiterate what we find ourselves reiterating frequently these days: your essays are your own. We report on what we have discovered after years and years of working with applicants and seeing how the schools respond. But in the end, it's just an opinion (and a snarky one! maybe it should be discounted!
). You're the only one who needs to be happy with what you write in your essays.
This response probably didn't help but this is sort of in the "asked and answered" category,
we cover it ad nauseum on the blahg and our
essay guides.
EssaySnark