Meet the inspirational immigrants and first-generation Americans who make up the Class of 2021

Last week, thousands of high schoolers across the world waited for 5pm – the time Ivy League schools released their acceptance offers. Celebrating their success harder than are the undocumented students, immigrants and first-generation Americans who got into college – many of them the first in their family to study beyond high school. Over the past week, The Tab has interviewed the inspirational class of 2021 – meet them here.

Cassandra Hsiao – Accepted to all Ivies

Cassandra Hsiao is a writer, journalist, and once rapped in front of Lin-Manuel Miranda. She also got into Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Penn. When we spoke, she was still coming to terms with her achievement: “It’s totally surreal,” she said. “It’s still sinking in. I had a moment to myself yesterday where I was just sobbing. I celebrated with my parents.”

Priscilla Samey – Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Penn and Cornell

Priscilla hopes to study law when she graduates from one of the seven Ivy League colleges she was accepted to, with a view to becoming a corporate lawyer. Her stunning application essay, which you can read here, reveals the challenges of growing up in a low-income house as the child of Togolese parents. She describes the moment she heard about her college acceptances: “My mom was like me, complete shocked. She was crying and dancing around. My dad was like: ‘I told you so!'”

Raajii Daniel – Yale

The son of Ethiopian immigrants, Raajii hopes to study Math or Econ when he goes to Yale this fall. A mathlete and speech champion from Saint Cloud, Minnesota, he said it felt “overwhelming” when he heard the news. “We cried for hours,” he added. Raajii wrote about the struggles of studying in an all-white elementary and middle school in a powerful admissions essay. Read it here.

Kevin Riera – Yale, Penn, Princeton and Stanford

Kevin Riera’s grandmother was deported to Ecuador when he was 10 years old, and it became a formative memory for him – one that he would write about in his application essay. “I didn’t think I would get in,” he explained before he found out. And when he did: “I started crying, we were all screaming. My hands were shaking.”

Victor Reyes – Harvard

DREAMer Victor Reyes arrived in the US aged four, and now he’s heading to Harvard. A class valedictorian and Computer Science hopeful, he couldn’t believe the news when he found out with his mom. “We started yelling and freaking out,” he remembers. His essay explores what it’s like to live in the States as an undocumented kid.

Ilham Talgesir –  Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Stanford

Sudanese high schooler Ilham Talgesir has been accepted to America’s top schools, and has President Trump’s travel ban to contend with. “I am concerned,” she explains. “But at the same time, the travel ban has been blocked several times. It doesn’t seem like many of his oppressive policies will last.” Her sister is a junior at Harvard (who currently can’t leave the country for fear she won’t be allowed back in), and trying to persuade her to go Crimson. She wrote a poignant essay about living under oppression in Sudan – check it out.

Carlos Rodriguez – Harvard, Princeton, Columbia

When he was just six months old, Carlos Rodriguez arrived in the US as an undocumented Mexican immigrant. He’s now his school’s student body president, a Physics major hopeful, and Ivy League bound. His application essay opened up about living as an undocumented student in LA.

Serhiy Sokhan – Harvard, Princeton, Brown and Penn

Serhiy is a first generation American and the first person in his family to go to college, having come to the US from Ukraine 12 years ago. “I cried, my mother cried,” he said about when he got into Harvard. “Seeing your parents cry because of happiness is one of the most amazing feelings in the world.” He wrote an ingenious essay about solving Rubik’s Cubes, which won him a place at four out of eight schools in the Ivy League.