A Florida teenager is headed to Harvard University after being accepted to all eight prestigious Ivy League schools.
Ashley Adirika, 17, says she applied to every one of the schools after a friend encouraged her and told her to “shoot her shot”.
And it proved worthwhile as she received offers and scholarships to each of them, and seven other top universities across the United States.
What makes it even more impressive is that the chance of being accepted into one Ivy League university is between three and eight per cent.
But that did not stop her from getting accepted into Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale.
Ashley is a first-generation Nigerian-American, and her mother emigrated to the US from her home country three decades ago and was surrounded by her family when she learned of her impressive feat.
The talented teenager graduated from Miami Beach Senior High School earlier this month and found out she had been accepted on “Ivy Day” in March, when all the universities announce who they have taken.
“I just decided to shoot my shot at all of them and see if it would land. And I had no idea that I would get accepted into all of them,” she said.
“On Ivy Day, I remember crying a lot and just being extremely surprised.”
And she added: “It was surreal. It felt amazing to know the work that I put into my educational journey was paying off and to see [colleges] recognise that.”
Ashley plans on majoring in government when she arrives at Harvard, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, later this year.
“Before the college application process, Yale was actually my top choice. But when I did further research for what I want to do specifically, which is explorations in policy and social policy and things of that nature, Harvard just had a better program,” she said.
