MIDDLETOWN, CT — When Gianna Thomas, a Middletown High School senior, applied to her dream school, she wasn’t sure she would be admitted. However, not only did she get accepted into her dream school, she was accepted into nearly every school she applied for.
Thomas said she applied to 70 schools, of which four were Ivy League: Cornell University, Yale University, Brown University and Dartmouth College.
“I got into every Ivy League School I applied to,” she said. “Out of the 70 I applied to, I got rejected by two and waitlisted in one of them.”
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Even though Thomas got accepted to all Ivy League Schools she applied to, she decided to attend Yale University, her dream school, where she plans to study bio-engineering and public health.
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“I have had the privilege of doing activities with Yale, so it’s been nice to have that connection,” she said.
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One of the reasons she applied to 70 schools is because she wanted a school where she could get a full-ride scholarship.
“Being a first-generation low-income student, achieving a full-ride scholarship was important to me,” said Thomas. “Applying to 70 schools helped me maximize my potential in that regard.”
However, Thomas said growing up classified as a low-income student helped her “fight for a lot of opportunities.”
“Especially in the life sciences, which I sort of saw is where my interests were headed,” she said.
In February, a month before Ivy Day, the day Ivy League schools released their admissions decisions online, Thomas received an email from her admissions officer at Yale saying she wanted to speak with Thomas.
“At the end of the call, she told me that each regional admissions officer gets to select one student out of their pool of applicants, and she told me if I wanted to be that student,” Thomas said. “I started crying, and I was overwhelmed with joy and told her I would love the opportunity to go to Yale.”
Thomas’ hard work isn’t just shown in her acceptance letters for the universities, but she was also the recipient of some scholarships with a low acceptance rate, including the Coca-Cola Scholarship.
“It’s 0.17 percent acceptance rate,” she said. “About 90,000 students applied, and only 150 of us were accepted, and I was the only one from Connecticut.”
Throughout the process, Thomas said she learned that organization is the key to mastery.
“Without my Google Spreadsheets and myriad lists, I would definitely not have been able to apply to all the schools and scholarships and achieve what I achieved,” she said. “I think there’s a simplicity and effectivity in putting everything on a sheet of paper and having it in front of you.”
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