Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna has a dilemma on her hands -- but it’s not the worst kind of problem to have.
The 17-year-old valedictorian from Elmont Memorial High School in Long Island recently learned she was accepted to all 12 colleges where she applied, including all eight Ivy League schools.
The prestigious Ivy League eight are Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale. Uwamanzu-Nna was also accepted to MIT, Johns Hopkins, New York University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
“My family is so excited,” Uwamanzu-Nna told KSLA-TV of her extraordinary achievement. “Sometimes I feel like they get so much more excited than me. They literally scream. When I called my mom and told her she was screaming on the phone.”
The teen has a few weeks to decide which university she wants to attend.
“I am humbled by all of the college acceptance letters that I recently received,” she said in a news release. “I am reminded that I have a responsibility to be a role model for others and use my experiences to encourage and inspire others, especially young women.”
Uwamanzu-Nna said she plans to pursue a science-related major. She was a finalist at the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search, the country's top research competition for high school seniors. And this week, she received an invitation to the White House Science Fair.
The daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Uwamanzu-Nna credited her family and teachers for her academic success. Hard work, she said, also played a huge role.
“I’ve struggled with numerous classes in the past,” she told WABC-TV. “But I guess what allowed me to be successful, ultimately, in those classes, at the end, is my persistence and my tenacity.”
This is the second year in a row that an Elmont Memorial student was accepted to every Ivy League college. Last year, the school's salutatorian, Harold Ekeh picked Yale as his institution of choice after receiving acceptance letters from all eight schools.
“Having two students get accepted into all eight Ivy League institutions in back-to-back years is humbling but also speaks to the incredible commitment to children by the families and staff within the EMHS Community,” Kevin Dougherty, the school’s principal, told CNN.
