A New Jersey high school student is tasked with making a big decision — which Ivy League campus to commit to. Angel Ortiz, a senior at Arts High School, has been admitted to seven prestigious institutions as he is prepared to begin his collegiate career. According to ABC7, after being admitted to Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Columbia, Brown, and Princeton, the teenager has also gained acceptance at Yale.
“I had a feeling I could get into more than one Ivy, but never did I anticipate getting into every one I applied to,” detailed the 17-year-old. The news station explained Ortiz is a first-generation Latino student from Newark, NJ. “I’m still processing it. When the notifications came in, I spent two hours walking around the kitchen in shock, while my mom sat there in disbelief.”
“As a first-generation Latino son of immigrants, I know that avenues like college are much harder to access for people like us,” he later added, continuing, “I hope that now, during my college life, and in my future career, I can be the best representation of my community and loved ones.”
To help make his decision, Ortiz has planned to visit the campuses of each school. He shared that once his selection is made and the semester begins, he hopes to major in political science and work as a lawyer, government official, or researcher once finished. The ambitious student has marked his deadline to choose his next step as April 30, which is also his 18th birthday.
“If I ask a question and every kid in the class doesn’t understand it, they just point, Angel knows it, and so he’s always top notch, always on his game,” shared one of his teachers, Sean Kenny.
According to research published by The Education Trust, “on average, all eight Ivy League institutions remained inaccessible for Latino students between 2000 and 2020.”
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