Local gets in with Ivy League schools

Nearly a month after she received letters of acceptance from nine universities - including seven Ivy League colleges - a Big Sandy High School senior has decided she will attend Yale University next year.  

Gabriella Blatt of Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation, 17, said Monday she decided to go to Yale after visiting the University of Chicago, Harvard University and Yale in recent weeks.  

She said the sense of community she felt at Yale was a contributing factor in her final decision.

"This is super cliché to say, but I felt like I belonged at Yale from the moment I stepped on campus," Blatt said. "I didn't feel that way anywhere else."

The dorm system at Yale, where groups of students live in the same house throughout their four years at the college, allows for a strong sense of community to develop, she said.  

Blatt, who wants to study science and double major in public policy, said what she wants to study is less popular at Yale than at some of the other colleges, which means smaller class sizes and more attention.

Blatt was accepted into seven of the country's eight Ivy League colleges - Brown University, Cornell University, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale - last month. She also received letters of acceptance to Stanford University and the University of Chicago.

It was March 30 while in her school math core - the highest-level math class Big Sandy High has to offer - when Blatt  learned  by email she had been accepted into seven Ivy League colleges. She had been on her computer while her classmates were doing ACT prep. She opened her email and found she had been accepted into Brown, Cornell and Columbia, the ones with higher acceptance rates.

"And that was a big surprise, like, I can go out of state now," she said.

She also found out by email that she received decisions from Harvard, Yale and Princeton universities. Blatt said she opened the email from Princeton to find she had been rejected.

"And so I opened up Harvard next because I did not think I was going to get in and saw the congratulations and had a mini freak out, I think you can call it," Blatt said.

Blatt then found she had been accepted into Yale. She then left the classroom to call her mother to relay the news. She then told her science teacher.

Initially, Blatt said, she planned to only apply to colleges in Montana. But Indigenous Scholars of Promise, a program that provides Native American high school students with the support services and resources needed to apply to top-tier colleges, encouraged her to apply elsewhere.

"I didn't apply thinking that I would get in," Blatt said. "I just kind of chanced it, like, 'it is cool if I get in, but it is OK if I don't,' because Carroll College, which I also wanted to go to, is a great school, too."

For Blatt, who said she has always taken her education seriously, acceptance into some of the nation's most prestigious universities is a major achievement. She had been a student at Box Elder School until her sophomore year, when she decided to transfer to Big Sandy because of its science program. She said the choice to leave Box Elder, where she had gone since she had been in elementary school, was hard, but at the time she thought it would benefit her in the long run.

When her family first learned she had been accepted into some of the nation's most renowned colleges, they were a little uneasy given the high price tag associated with tuition. However, Blatt said, all the universities she has been accepted to have very generous financial aid policies. She will also be the recipient of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Scholarship, which she said is the nation's largest scholarship, that will cover up to $40,000 in costs not covered by the college.

Blatt's mother, Christina Blatt, said she is proud of her youngest daughter. She said that often on the reservation there are high rates of pregnancy and drug use among young people. Her daughter avoided those pitfalls and she hopes she can be an inspiration to others.

"I just feel like she has accomplished so much in her high school and elementary years," Christina Blatt said. "It is her dream, and whatever her dream is, I am happy for her."

Gabriella Blatt said being accepted into some of the nation's most prestigious universities is rewarding because of the high value she has placed on her education.

"I guess I kind a feel a sense of accomplishment because it's like all my work these past four years has paid off, so I am kind of reaping the benefits of it now," Blatt said.