Friday, April 10, 2015
Their parents came to the U.S. for opportunities and now these four teens have them in abundance.
The high-achieving high schoolers have each been accepted to all eight Ivy League schools: Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University and Yale University.
And as well as the Ivy League colleges, each of them has also been accepted to other top schools.
While they all grew up in different cities, the students are the offspring of immigrant parents who moved to America - from Bulgaria, Somalia or Nigeria.
And all four - Munira Khalif from Minnesota, Stefan Stoykov from Indiana, Victor Agbafe from North Carolina, and Harold Ekeh from New York - say they have their parents' hard work to thank.
Now they hope to use the opportunities for good - whether its effecting positive social change, improving education across the world or becoming a neurosurgeon.
The teens have one more thing in common: they don't know which school they're going to pick yet.
The daughter of Somali immigrants who has already received a U.N. award and wants to improve education across the world
Munira Khalif, who attends Mounds Park Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota, was shocked when she was accepted by eight Ivy Schools and three others - but her teachers were not.
'She is composed and she is just articulate all the time,' Randy Comfort, an upper school director at the private school, told KMSP. 'She's pretty remarkable.'
The 18-year-old student, who was born and raised in Minnesota after her parents fled Somalia during the civil war, she said she was inspired to work hard because of the opportunities her family and the U.S. had given her.
'The thing is, when you come here as an immigrant, you're hoping to have opportunities not only for yourself, but for your kids,' she told the channel. 'And that's always been at the back of my mind.'
As well as achieving top grades, Khalif has immersed herself in other activities both in and out of school - particularly those aimed at doing good.
She was one of nine youngsters in the world to receive the UN Special Envoy for Global Education's Youth Courage Award for her education activism, which she started when she was just 13.
She launched a non-profit group, Lighting the Way, to make education more accessible for East African youth, especially girls, through scholarships, libraries and improving sanitation issues.
And she was also appointed as A World at School Global Youth Ambassador to promote universal education.
Khalif, who plans to study political science at college, said she has yet to decide where to go and plans to visit a few more campuses before she makes her final decision.
As well as the Ivy League schools, she also received offers from Stanford, Georgetown and the University of Minnesota - and she's still letting the realization sink in.
'I was very surprised,' she said. 'I am humbled to even have the opportunity to choose amongst these schools because they are all incredible places to learn and grow.'
The Bulgarian housekeeper's son who couldn't speak English a decade before he was accepted to 18 top schools in the U.S.
When eight-year-old Stefan Stoykov moved from his family's one-bedroom apartment in Bulgaria to the U.S. after his parents won a green card lottery, he could not speak a word of English.
'I started crying on the first day of class,' Stefan recalled of his first day in the second grade. 'I was scared. I was scared. I didn't understand what was going on around me.'
But now 18 and a senior at North Central High School in Indianapolis, Indiana, he has been accepted into some of the finest schools in the world - and he admits he can hardly believe it.
'It is an incredible feeling,' Stefan told WTHR.
'I never knew that I would have a chance to choose from possibly the best schools from the world. 'I was hoping to get into at least one of the Ivy Leagues.'
But as well as getting offers from all Ivy League schools, 10 other prestigious institutions also came knocking. He has yet to decide where he will go.
He revealed that hard work and the support of his mother, a housekeeper, had helped him achieve his goals. Shortly after arriving in the U.S., his parents divorced and his father took a job as a truck driver, and he has not seen him much since.
'My parents had done so much to put me in this position, to put me in the United States of America,' he said. 'And I had to take advantage of that. I had to do something with the opportunities they gave me.'
Stefan's extracurricular activities include tutoring other students with language barriers, running the cycling club and Spirit Week and joining the stock market club, the Indy Star reported. He is also valedictorian and secured a perfect SAT score by borrowing test guides from the library.
He also helps his mother - who spent much of his childhood working so that she could support him - with her housekeeping duties so that it takes her half the time.
The son of a Nigerian immigrant who dreams of becoming a neurosurgeon
Victor Agbafe, a student at Cape Fear Academy in Wilmington, North Carolina, has no idea where he will attend college, but he's certain on one thing: he wants to become a neurosurgeon.
The 17-year-old was accepted to 14 schools in total, including all eight Ivy League schools and Stanford and Duke.
Agbafe, who plans to double major in microbiology along with government or economics, called his acceptance achievement an 'amazing opportunity', WSOC reported.
Just before he played a game for his school's basketball team, he learned that Harvard had made a decision about his application - but he waited until the game was over to find out.
'I owed it my teammates to be focused there,' he said. 'I didn't want to get too low on myself if I didn't get in. I also didn't want to get too high if I was accepted.'
He has also been part of North Carolina's Youth and Government program, where he was chosen as Speaker of the House.
He says his mother, a Nigerian immigrant and physician, set a good example for him - but she refuses to take the credit.
'For God to crown his effort with success is just something that is just beyond me,' his mother Dorothy Agbafe-Mosley said.
'I am very happy that he has all these choices to make. But then it also makes it difficult because it's a lot of good schools. A lot of good schools.'
Her son will make a decision later this month after visiting as many campuses as possible.
The Nigerian student who credits his Target employee parents with his success
Ten years after his family moved him from Nigeria to the U.S., Harold Ekeh is hoping to do something for them in return.
The 18-year-old Long Islander was accepted by 14 colleges - including all Ivy League schools - and now hopes to study neuroscience to cure Alzheimer's, the disease his grandmother suffers from.
The straight-A student at Elmont Memorial High School secured an SAT score of 2270. He also worked as editor-in-chief of his student newspaper and chief executive of the Model United Nations.
But he wasn't expecting to get into so many top schools. As well as offers from the Ivy League colleges, he was also accepted by Johns Hopkins, NYU, MIT, Vanderbilt, and SUNY Stony Brook.
'It was crazy,' he told DailyMail.com. 'My mom was sat next to me and it was just letter after letter after letter. I couldn't believe it.'
Afterwards 'I went to Chipotle with my friends for a half steak half chicken burrito bowl. It was perfect,' he said.
He said it was the resilience of his parents, former Target clerks Paul and Roseline Ekeh, that gave him the drive to achieve the best.
'It was such a huge thing for my parents to uproot our family, a family of six, from our home to a new country,' he said.
'I was worried as a kid about speaking with an American accent, but they had to worried about actually finding jobs. They joked that they came over for the 24-hour electricity. But I know it was so we would have opportunities as children.
'No matter how many times they got knocked down, they stayed positive, and kept telling me that the secret to success in unbridled resolve.'
He said he is leaning towards going to Yale but will be visiting a few more campuses before making his decision before May 1.