Virginia student earns admission to all eight Ivy League schools, and others

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Hat tip, DCist: ◾Genius kid makes the rest of us feel really bad about ourselves. (Post)

Virginia student earns admission to all eight Ivy League schools, and others

Education
By T. Rees Shapiro April 10
@TReesShapiro



Pooja Chandrashekar, 17, at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County on Monday April 6, 2015. (J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post)

Even at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a top-ranked magnet school, senior Pooja Chandrashekar stands out among her brainiac peers.

She’s got a 4.57 grade-point average, scored a 2390 (out of 2400) on the SAT, and aced all 13 of her Advanced Placement exams. She also founded a national non-profit that encourages middle-school girls to participate in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs.

She’s also developed a mobile app that analyzes speech patterns and predicts with 96 percent accuracy if a person has Parkinson’s disease. ... Oh, and she’s 17.

College admissions offices took notice. She can now add another bullet to her résumé: Pooja earned admission to all eight Ivy League schools. She also was accepted at Stanford, MIT, Duke, the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan and Georgia Tech, going 14 for 14.

[jwirr]

1. I hope she is going to use all the brain power for good.

[exboyfil]

2. I guess it is a prestige thing

but I really never understood applying to more than three or four colleges. At $50 to $100/application it can get really expensive quickly. My oldest applied to only one college (she was an automatic admittal in our state), and we have not regretted the decision. Our youngest will probably apply to two (B.S. Biology/Biochemistry at one and B.S. Nursing at the other).

[FSogol]

3. A counselor at my son's old HS told us he had a student that applied to 23 colleges.

Applying to all 8 ivy leagues is nothing more than an ego trip. A serious student should be able to narrow it to 3-4 choices like two preferred schools, a reach school (one that is a bit beyond your ability) , and a fall back school.

My oldest applied to 1, my youngest to 3.