Ashley Adirika, who's Nigerian-American, was accepted to Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale.
Instagram / Ashley Adirika
A Florida teenager, who's a first-generation Nigerian-American, has fairly the number of Ivy League faculties to select from — each one in every of them.
Ashley Adirika, a debate champ who hopes to assist alleviate revenue inequality, bought into Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale.
“The tears simply began to come back out. Like they began to circulation out,” she informed ABC Information about her response to discovering out.
“My siblings and I had been simply actually excited, like screaming, leaping round. It was loopy.”
The budding scholar, who went to highschool at Miami Seashore Senior Excessive Faculty, was additionally accepted to Stanford, Vanderbilt, and Emory.
“I simply determined to shoot my shot in any respect of them and see if it will land — And I had no concept that I'd get accepted into all of them,” the 17-year-old pupil informed CNN.
“I bear in mind crying lots and simply being extraordinarily shocked.”
Ashley ended up selecting Harvard, which solely accepted a record-low of three.19% of functions for the category of 2026.
“Earlier than the faculty software course of, Yale was truly my best choice. However after I did additional analysis for what I need to do particularly, which is explorations in coverage and social coverage and issues of that nature, Harvard simply had a greater program,” Ashley mentioned, including she needs to review how insurance policies can ameliorate revenue disparities.
She’ll begin her Ivy League training within the fall and plans to go to legislation faculty after acquiring her undergraduate diploma.
“I'm actually enthusiastic about coverage and utilizing coverage to empower communities. And so within the brief time period, for me, that appears like turning into a lawyer,” she mentioned.
“However in the long run, I need to use that as a platform to do work in coverage.”
Adirika was recruited to her faculty’s debate crew when she was in eighth grade.
“All people knew Ashley due to how good she was. She had check scores by the roof,” mentioned Bess Rodriguez, a seventh grade English trainer who recruited her.
“Once we went to debates, the opposite youngsters, after they noticed her come within the room, they might say, ‘Oh no, now we have to debate Ashley.’ You already know, she simply bought a repute like that.”
She additionally began an area group, Our Story Our Value, that gives mentorship to younger ladies of colour.
Unsurprisingly, Ashley was pupil council president and spoke at her highschool commencement ceremony too.
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