It would have been a success story if Fullerton High School senior Fernando Rojas, the son of Mexican immigrants whose schooling stopped in the eighth grade, was accepted to college. But the 17-year-old achieved a surprising clean sweep — he was accepted to every Ivy League school.
"I didn't think I would get into any," Rojas told The Orange County Register on Saturday. "When I got all eight, it was a blessing and a curse because I had to choose. I was excited and scared and everything at the same time."
The first call came from Yale University in February. Within weeks calls, emails and letters followed from Dartmouth College, Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, Columbia University, Harvard University and Princeton University.
Every Ivy League school told the senior they wanted him.
Rojas also was accepted by Stanford University and two nearby schools, the University of California, Irvine, and California State University, Fullerton.
He is one of four children of Raul Rojas, 59, and wife, Maria, 56, who moved to Fullerton from Jalisco, Mexico, in the early 1980s. Raul is a machine operator, and Maria is a seamstress.
A national speech and debate champion, Rojas . . .
