While thousands of students struggle to get into one of the eight Ivy League schools, 17-year-old high schooler Itzel Luna got accepted into five.
Luna, a first-generation Latina student from Los Angeles County, has been accepted into 18 universities, including five Ivy League schools — Harvard, Brown, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia.
Luna is a senior at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School in Lake Balboa, where nearly 70 percent of the high school population comes from low-income backgrounds.
While the previous year has been challenging for students everywhere, Luna is happy her hard work has paid off. Now all that’s left for the 17-year-old is to pick a school by May 3.
“I was just absolutely shocked,” Luna told KCAL 9. “All I could do was just keep checking, because I didn’t even know, like I couldn’t process it.”
The Road Ahead
Being passionate about journalism, Luna wants to major in communications and political science. As a sophomore, she covered the 2019 Los Angeles Unified School District teachers’ strike for her school’s student newspaper. She wants to be a political journalist someday.
Luna’s journalism teacher Adriana Chavira said ever since ninth grade, Luna has worked hard to bag an opportunity like this. “I’ve had her every single year since then, and she’s very determined, persistent,” Chavira added.
With a 3.89 GPA, Luna is the only student in her school to have secured a seat in not one, but five Ivy Leagues.
“I do think it’s important that these stories be shared so that other first-gen low-income kids know these institutions aren’t just for the wealthy. That you as a low-income or first-gen kid also deserve to be here,” Luna told KTLA.