Applying to college is not easy. After you’ve gathered the letters of rec, scraped together some cash for application fees and slaved over your personal statement for weeks, you still have to deal with the aftermath: potential rejection letters, sky-high tuition and applications to every scholarship you even remotely qualify for.
Luckily, the process is just as exciting as it is nerve-wracking, and for one Texas teen, the excitement was absolutely unreal when he got accepted to not one, but 20 different schools. And here’s the kicker: he received full rides to all of them. (*sobbing*)
Chron.com reports that Michael Brown, a 17-year-old senior from Lamar High School in Houston, applied to 20 schools, including Ivy Leagues Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. Accepted into all 20, he earned a full ride to each school and over $260,000 in scholarships.
With a 4.68 GPA and a list of extracurricular activities including volunteering and the debate team, the only one who seemed to be surprised in this situation was Brown himself. “It’s surprising I was accepted to all of them,” said Brown after he received the last few acceptances, according to Chron.
“I’m very grateful, I’m very thankful,” Berthinia Rutledge-Brown, Brown’s mother, tells ABC News. “I know that he has done an amazing job, and I get to watch him every day. It’s just normal to me.”
Brown gives much of the credit to his mother, who inspired the teen to work hard through her actions when she enrolled in Houston Community College to become a counselor when Brown was only eight or nine years old, according to Chron. “After she got divorced, she decided she needed to get a better job,” Brown says.
“That’s the first time I understood what going to college might look like,” Brown continued. “And seeing how important it was to my mom was important to me. I don’t even think she really knew that I saw, that it had an impact on me—but it did.”
Brown, who became really serious about preparing for college at the end of ninth-grade, and plans to study political science or economics, according to his mother. He also wants to become involved with the debate team.
“I got very serious about finding ways to get extra-involved in my community and be prepared for college admissions when I got older,” says Brown, who most recently worked on Mayor Sylvester Turner’s election campaign, according to Chron.
Here’s how Micheal Brown celebrated his acceptance to Stanford. The 17-year-old from Houston, Texas, applied to 20 of the best universities in the US and was admitted to every single one with a full ride — and $260,000 in additional scholarship offers https://t.co/HrXpq9vX2Y pic.twitter.com/oWMro4DAYS
— CNN (@CNN) April 2, 2018
ABC News reports that Brown is a part of a program called EMERGE Fellowship, which aims to help and prepare “high-performing students from underserved communities” for getting into and graduating from select colleges and universities.
“He could throw a dart at any of the schools and he’s going to be just fine, so there’s no pressure coming from me,” says Norman Clark, an EMERGE academic program director. “He has a track record of making great decisions. Now it’s up to Micheal.”
Brown hasn’t made a final decision yet, but Chron reports that he has narrowed his decision down to seven schools: Northwestern, Georgetown, Princeton, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and Stanford. He thinks it’ll come down to Harvard and Stanford.
Brown’s ultimate goal is to go to law school, and from the looks of his track record, his future will be nothing but bright!