article by Jennifer Earl via cbsnews.com
Many college-bound high school seniors will have difficult decisions to make as summer approaches, but few can compare to the choice facing New Jersey teen Ifeoma White-Thorpe – she was accepted to all eight Ivy League colleges. White-Thorpe, 17, from Morris Hills High School in Rockaway, New Jersey, was accepted into Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, and the University of Pennsylvania. And that’s not all. White-Thorpe was accepted into Stanford University, too.
At first, she was solely focused on Harvard — the first school to officially give her the green light. But acceptance letters from other prestigious schools across the country soon flooded her mailbox, and now she’s back to square one. “I got into Harvard Early Action, so I was like I’ll just go there. And then I got into all the others and now I don’t know where I want to go,” White-Thorpe told CBS Philly on Tuesday.
The teenager already has quite an impressive list of accomplishments. She’s student government president, ranks high in her advanced placement courses and is a talented poet and writer. She recently won first place in the National Liberty Museum’s Selma Speech & Essay Contest.“Education is essential for change, and I aspire to be that change,” White-Thorpe said after winning a $5,000 prize in the national essay contest.
White-Thorpe says she wants to major in global healthy policy, and plans to look into what programs each school offers in her field. But that’s not the only factor that will help make her decision. It will likely come down to whichever university provides the best financial aid package, she said.
Source: 17-year-old New Jersey teen accepted into all 8 Ivy League schools – CBS News
In the end, he decided on the University of Alabama and rejected offers from all eight Ivy League schools.
Nelson also rejected offers from Stanford, Johns Hopkins, New York University, Vanderbilt, and Washington University in St. Louis.
He decided to pass on these big names in favor of UA for two big reasons: He got a full ride from Alabama and got into its selective honors program.
“It took a lot of soul searching for me to push that first ‘accept’ button for Alabama,” Nelson said. “Of course there’s a bit of uncertainty.”
It’s easy to see why Nelson got into UA’s honors program and every single Ivy League school. As a student at Houston High School in Memphis, Tennessee, he has a 4.58 weighted GPA, has taken 15 AP courses, and achieved a 2260 out of 2400 on his SAT and a 34 out of 36 on his ACT. He’s the senior-class president of his high school, a National Merit Scholar and National Achievement Scholar, and a state-recognized alto saxophone player.
Despite his achievements, Nelson did not receive a performance-based scholarship from the Ivy League schools. None of them offer merit scholarships, nor do several other prestigious universities, such as Stanford.
Like many top universities, each of the Ivy League schools vows to meet the full financial need of any student who gets admitted. However, this doesn’t mean they’re covering every student’s tuition. Rather, they use factors such as a family’s income, assets, and size to determine “demonstrated” need.
Each school offered Nelson some financial aid, he said, and “some of it could have been manageable for the first year.”
After that first year, though, his aid package would shrink; his older sister graduates from college in 2016 and his parents would then only be supporting one child’s tuition. The change, according to Nelson, would be “pretty drastic.”
Nelson also rejected offers from Stanford, Johns Hopkins, New York University, Vanderbilt, and Washington University in St. Louis.
He decided to pass on these big names in favor of UA for two big reasons: He got a full ride from Alabama and got into its selective honors program.
“It took a lot of soul searching for me to push that first ‘accept’ button for Alabama,” Nelson said. “Of course there’s a bit of uncertainty.”
It’s easy to see why Nelson got into UA’s honors program and every single Ivy League school. As a student at Houston High School in Memphis, Tennessee, he has a 4.58 weighted GPA, has taken 15 AP courses, and achieved a 2260 out of 2400 on his SAT and a 34 out of 36 on his ACT. He’s the senior-class president of his high school, a National Merit Scholar and National Achievement Scholar, and a state-recognized alto saxophone player.
Despite his achievements, Nelson did not receive a performance-based scholarship from the Ivy League schools. None of them offer merit scholarships, nor do several other prestigious universities, such as Stanford.
Like many top universities, each of the Ivy League schools vows to meet the full financial need of any student who gets admitted. However, this doesn’t mean they’re covering every student’s tuition. Rather, they use factors such as a family’s income, assets, and size to determine “demonstrated” need.
Each school offered Nelson some financial aid, he said, and “some of it could have been manageable for the first year.”
After that first year, though, his aid package would shrink; his older sister graduates from college in 2016 and his parents would then only be supporting one child’s tuition. The change, according to Nelson, would be “pretty drastic.”
