By Janine Dumaguin
A Filipina scholar got accepted in six prestigious universities in the United States (US) for a doctoral program in Astrophysics.
In a Facebook post, Hillary Diane Andales shared that she got accepted into Yale University, Stanford University, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Northwestern University, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, and Boston University.
Andales said her dream started when she was five years old when she “learned that more than a million Earths could fit inside the Sun.”
“Coming out of my social media hiatus to share that I’m closer to my dream of getting a PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics!” Andales wrote.
“Now, after almost two decades of moving toward this dream, I have the privilege of getting paid to study galaxies for the next 6 years. The road getting here was tough. I moved away from my home in the Philippines to a foreign (yet wonderful) place that endlessly made me question myself,” she added.
Andales is a current scholar of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), majoring in Physics and minoring in both Astronomy and Philosophy.
“As a 5-year-old girl living in the small town of Abuyog, Leyte, I never imagined that this path was possible for me. I am where I am thanks to the support of those around me,” she added.
She received scholarship offers from MIT and six other universities after she bagged the 2017 Breakthrough Junior Challenge for a video explanation of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. – gb
