Ever been accepted to an Ivy League? Try eight of them. That’s exactly Ifeoma White-Thorpe’s problem: She has acceptance letters from Cornell, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Brown. She also got into Stanford, too.
White-Thorpe currently serves as president of student government at Morris Hills High School, in Rockaway, New Jersey. She plans to study biology in order to work in global health. Her motivation for applying to all eight Ivy Leagues? Each one has research facilities that are perfect for her field.
“I was like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, like this might be eight out of eight and I clicked it and it said ‘Congratulations’ and I was like oh my goodness!” White-Thorpe said to WABC-TV, according to CNN.
USA Today reports that White-Thorpe was originally accepted into Harvard on early action. But now she’s unsure where to go to. The deciding factor, as it turns out, will be financial aid packages.
“At this point none of the schools I’ve applied to said they give merit scholarships, so I’m praying that they give me some more financial aid or some money, shout out to all of those schools, please give me something,” White-Thorpe said to a local news station, according to USA Today.
Her decision makes sense. A report from Forbes reveals there are over 44 million student loan borrowers, with over $1.3 trillion in debt within the U.S. alone. In last year’s class of 2016, the average student owed $37,172 in student debt. During Q4 2016, there was a $31 billion increase in student loan debt, suggesting that financial aid is now more important than ever for young millennials entering college for the class of 2021.
H/T CNN