Teen who lost everything in Hurricane Sandy accepted to seven Ivy League schools
Teen who lost everything in Hurricane Sandy accepted to seven Ivy League schools
A New York teen who lost everything in Hurricane Sandy has been accepted to seven Ivy League schools.
Daria Rose, 18, immersed herself in her studies after she and her family lost everything — including their home — when the superstorm hit in October 2012. And after a difficult high school experience, the 18-year-old has a bright future ahead of her.
The Hempstead teen has been accepted into all seven of the Ivy League schools she applied to, ABC news reports.
‘I was like, oh my God, I just got into Harvard,’ Rose told ABC 7. ‘Then I checked Princeton, and I was like, oh my God I, just got into Princeton. And I checked Brown, I got in. It just kept going and going.’
Rose did not apply to Columbia, according to ABC.
Rose and her family lived in several hotels as well as her grandmother’s house after being forced to evacuate their home in Baldwin, which was destroyed, ABC News reports. After more than a year, the family moved into a new home in Baldwin.
Although the frequent moves made finishing school work difficult, Rose said, she never gave up on her dream of attending an Ivy League school.
‘I was living in these small spaces but in my head I was able to escape,’ Rose said ‘find myself in a literary world.’
Rose wrote about her Hurricane Sandy experience in a college application essay in which she talked about the storm and how reading helped her cope.
The essay helped the Sacred Heart Academy student secure a spot in Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, and Brown.
‘After moving so much and meeting so many different people, I learned I can adapt and adjust to all these different situations and people,’ Rose told ABC 7.
Rose’s mother, Katrina Brooks, said that the family’s experience turned out to be a blessing because it provided the teen with something substantial to write to the schools’ admissions offices.
‘It’s easy to say ‘I’m just going to lay here in a ball and cry and wallow in my own self pity,” Brooks said. ‘I’d make sure she’d get up and put one foot in front of the other.’
While Rose said she had always leaned toward Yale, in her junior year of high school, she began looking at other options and decided to apply to the seven schools.
Rose applied to seven of the eight Ivy League schools and, on March 31, the schools posted their decisions online, according to ABC.
‘They’re all such great schools,’ Rose said. ‘[I’ll] try to see where I’ll fit in the best.’
Rose said she plans to study political science and Russian literature.
She has until May 1 to decide where she will attend.
