Where Are They Now: Owen Holt

We're back with the latest installment of our Where Are They Now series, spotlighting former Cram Crew students and how they've carried the skills they built with us into college, careers, and beyond. Next up: Owen Holt, a former Harvard baseball pitcher and Cincinnati Reds draft pick who is now pursuing his MBA at the Wharton School.

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Owen Holt came to Cram Crew in the fall of 2025, and not as a "typical" Cram Crew Student. Rather than a high schooler navigating the SAT, Owen came to Cram Crew as a professional athlete navigating something entirely new: business school applications and a dream of Wharton Business School. Owen worked with the Cram Crew team throughout his MBA application process, leaning on Consultants to help him translate a career spent on the mound into a story admissions committees would connect with. "Cram Crew brought such value when it came to crafting my story," he shared. "I had such a unique story to tell, and the team at Cram Crew really helped me craft my pitch. I was a little different than your college applicants from a school perspective, but Deepak, Brandi, and the team helped so much when it came to laying out timelines and helping me show the best version of Owen Holt."  That guidance mattered most in the details: the parts of an application that are easy to overlook but can make or break how a story lands. "Cram Crew helped me narrate my application well," Owen explained. "I had graduated from college already and taken the GRE. Cram Crew helped fine tune the little details, which can cause a ton of stress."  

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Owen's path to Wharton has been windy, and it began years earlier on a football field, not a baseball diamond. He walked onto Harvard's baseball team after switching sports, and his first outing quickly became one of the defining memories of his college career. "One of my favorite memories was pitching in my first game for Harvard," he recalled. "I had just joined the baseball team after switching from football and went on to throw five scoreless innings versus Alabama. It was great to see all of my hard work pay off in that moment in front of my entire family who had traveled to watch me pitch." Balancing that athletic workload with Harvard's academics and a full social life wasn't easy. "The toughest part of college was managing everything," he said. "How do I balance social commitments, academics, and still do well in athletics? It was challenging, no doubt, but it gave me great friends and skills that will carry me over my whole life." ‍ 

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That balancing act paid off when Owen was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds, a moment he still remembers down to the room he was standing in. "The draft is a crazy process," he said. "Teams will call you with a signing bonus and draft round, and you have about 15 seconds to decide. I was surrounded by former teammates and family when it happened. When the Reds called, it was such a special feeling. We all celebrated at a restaurant in Cambridge, MA that night. It will forever be one of the greatest, most stressful days of my life." Owen went on to pitch professionally, an experience he describes as far less glamorous than it looks from the outside. "Pro baseball life is romanticized everywhere you look," he commented. "While I will look on those days as some of the best days in my life, they were filled with a lot of lonely nights on the road and tedious efforts to improve your craft. While everyone saw the Double A pitcher with the great slider years later, very few understood the long and boring road it took to get there. I'm extremely proud of myself for battling through all the ups and downs that came with pro baseball." ‍

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Eventually, Owen made the challenging decision to retire. "Retirement is never an easy decision: a decision that is even hard for the people at the pinnacle of the sport, a decision that never gets easier with time," he reflected. "Sports have been at the forefront of everything I have done my entire life. I did not fully grasp this until the long drive back from Arizona when I was calling old coaches telling them the news." Rather than an ending, though, Owen sees his retirement from baseball as a launching point. "The decision to retire for me was a vote of confidence for the things I can do after playing. I am pursuing my MBA currently at the Wharton School and decided that this was a great way into the business world. It gives me a new mountain to climb: a mountain that I am extremely excited about." He chose Wharton over Rice and Texas after weighing all three closely. "They are all such great programs," he said. "I ultimately chose Wharton because of its financial prowess and great alumni network, and I thought going to Philly would help me grow and expand in more ways than staying close to home would have. I thought it was an opportunity that I couldn't pass up."  

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For Owen, the discipline that carried him through recruiting, two sports, and pro ball is the same discipline he's leaning on now. "As a student athlete, you have sports stressors, managing full academic workloads, and trying to balance it with everything else that life throws," he said. "When I was in the process of trying to get drafted, I was taking classes at two different universities and living in a small apartment in Alvin, TX. There were so many moments where it would have been easy to give up. However, if you keep pushing through and keep working, great things happen. This mentality will serve me well as I transition out of baseball. I may not have all the answers now, but I will keep pushing myself to get better across all the areas of my life." ‍ His advice for current student-athletes juggling recruiting, academics, and test prep is grounded in that same hard-won perspective. "Just know that it is possible, and that everything you are going through will help on the back end," he imparted. "Juggling all of this takes a special skill and a special type of discipline. You will be a better human being over the long run if you do not give up on yourself. This is exactly the reason why employers love to hire former college athletes, and why your story will one day make you a very interesting and unique person as you look back." ‍

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Owen's story is a reminder that "where are they now" doesn't have one finish line. Sometimes it's a pitcher's mound, sometimes a draft-day phone call, and sometimes a business school classroom.  With the discipline he built as a student-athlete and the storytelling support he found at Cram Crew, Owen is proving that reinvention is its own kind of win.