A high school senior from Massachusetts has a lot to celebrate. Western Mass News reports that Roberta Hannah, a student at Springfield High School of Science and Technology has been accepted into all eight ivy league schools for the fall 2020 semester.
The exciting news comes as Hannah’s school district, like many others, navigates online learning amid the coronavirus pandemic. It’s a considerable change of pace for many students, but the stellar senior, who says her honors and AP classes prepared her for this moment, is continuing with her studies as usual, currently readying for seven AP exams. She insists it’s her hard work and dedication that resulted in the eight coveted acceptances.
Hannah told Western Mass that she knew earlier on that she was accepted into four, but after Ivy Day, which is celebrated on March 26, it was confirmed that she would have her pick of some of the best colleges in the United States.
“Originally, I was only going to apply to three, but then my mom and my sister were like, ‘You should just apply to all eight,’ so I didn’t really have a choice,” Hannah told the media outlet.
The student-athlete, who, according to AthleticNet, has had an impressive, high school track and field career, plans to attend Columbia in the fall and major in biochemistry and African-American studies. “My goal is to be a medicinal chemist,” Hannah shared. “But with making medicine and kind of the one researching it, I want my focus to be on increasing accessibility and making the medicine more affordable.”
Hannah gives much-deserved credit to her mom and sister for molding her into the high-achieving student she is today. While her mother, Valerie Williams, did not attend college, she made sure to push her children “a little extra hard” to make sure that they would end up where she didn’t have the opportunity to go. For Roberta Hannah, her mother’s insistence is clearly paying off.