A 17-year-old Nigerian girl of Anambra parentage, Ashley Adirika has won a $4 million scholarship to study at the Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
Adirika’s outstanding academic performances earned her the privilege to apply to the Ivy League universities in the US.
Having graduated from the Miami Beach Senior High School, Florida, US, Ashley Adirika has always dreamt of going to study at an Ivy League University
When she opened her computer to check all her applications on Ivy Day, she was amazed to find out that all the Ivy League universities accepted and offered her a scholarship.
The schools included Brown University, Columbia University, Dartmouth University, Harvard University, Penn University, Princeton University, and Yale University.
Revealing her wild excitement, Adirika also said she received acceptance letters from Stanford University, Vanderbilt University, and Emory University.
“I just decided to shoot my shot at all of them and see if it would land. And I had no idea I would get accepted into all of them. On Ivy Day, I remember crying a lot and just being extremely surprised,” Ashely told CNN.
According to reports, the likelihood of being admitted to one of the elite universities ranges between three and eight percent.
Since 2018, the US most exclusive schools have accepted less than 12% of their applicants. In 2022, Yale took 4.5%, Columbia welcomed 3.7%, and Harvard greeted just 3.2% of its future pupils, the smallest number ever in the university’s history, according to CNN.
Along with her streak of stellar grades, Adirika is known as a force when it comes to speech and debate.
“I’m someone who loves to learn new things, and so debate gave me that opportunity,” she said.
“But more than anything, it just gave me the platform to talk about things that I believed in and talk about things that were important to me. And so that is something that I am just forever indebted to Carol City for introducing me to that platform.”
Starting in middle school, her skills were exemplary of what the future held in store for her.
“Everybody knew Ashley because of how smart she was,” Carol City Middle School teacher Bess Rodriguez shared.
“She had test scores through the roof; she’s involved in all different activities. So I recruited her, and she had never debated before,” Rodriguez added.
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