Nigerian SHS Student aged 17 wins $4million scholarship to study at Harvard and 14 other Top Universities

Ferdinand | EducationGhana | April 30|Nigerian SHS Student aged 17 wins $4million scholarship to study at Harvard and 14 other Top Universities

Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, recently accepted Ashley Adirika, a 17-year-old Nigerian-American girl, making her one of the 3.2% of applicants to the prestigious institution.

Ashley, a graduate of Miami Beach Senior High School in Florida, had always dreamed of attending an Ivy League university, so she applied to all of them in the United States.

Top Universities

On Ivy Day, she was overjoyed to learn that she had been accepted by all eight Ivy League universities, including Brown University, Columbia University, Dartmouth University, Harvard University, Penn University, Princeton University, and Yale University, all of which offered her scholarships worth over $4 million. She also received acceptance letters from Stanford University, Vanderbilt University, and Emory University.

The acceptance rate for these elite institutions ranges from three to eight percent, with the most exclusive schools accepting less than 12% of applicants since 2018. In 2022, Yale accepted 4.5%, Columbia accepted 3.7%, and Harvard accepted just 3.2%, the smallest number in the university’s history.

Ashley chose Harvard to study government and explore how policies can help address economic disparities in communities, as the university had a better program for her area of interest. Despite Yale being her initial top choice, Ashley did further research and chose Harvard, she explained in an interview with CNN.

On Ivy Day, Ashley felt extremely surprised and cried a lot, along with her family, upon receiving acceptance letters from all the Ivy League universities.