Teen Who Lost Home in Hurricane Sandy Accepted to 7 Ivy League Schools

Daria Rose has until May 1 to decide which college she'll attend.

ByABC News
April 19, 2015, 6:28 PM
New York high schooler Daria Rose was accepted to every Ivy League school where she applied .
New York high schooler Daria Rose was accepted to every Ivy League school where she applied .
Courtesy Daria Rose

— -- After a tumultuous high school experience, Long Island senior Daria Rose has a bright future ahead of her: The 18-year-old applied to seven Ivy League colleges and has been accepted to each one of them.

But when Rose was a sophomore, her world turned completely upside down.

Hurricane Sandy hit in October 2012, forcing her family to evacuate their beloved home in Baldwin. The house was then completely destroyed by fire.

After the storm, Rose's family lived in several hotels as well as her grandmother's house.

She said the moves made finishing school work extremely difficult.

"It was hard because it's really unpredictable when you don't have a stable place to live," she told ABC News today. "[You] don't know if you're moving here next, or there."

Rose said she lost all of her belongings in the fire, including clothes, furniture, makeup, jewelry and pictures.

"My mom and my dad and my family, they made me realize what was important," she said. "Stuff is just stuff. What is important is your health, education, your family."

After about a year and a half, they finally moved into a new house in Baldwin.

For a college application essay, Rose wrote about her Hurricane Sandy experience.

"It talks about the storm, but the focus is how reading helped me cope," she said. "I was living in these small spaces but in my head I was able to escape ... find myself in a literary world."

When it came to college preferences, Rose said she had always leaned towards Yale.

"I've always known I wanted to go to Yale," she said. "But junior year I started looking at all my options and I realized how many great schools there were out there."

She decided to apply to seven of the eight Ivy League colleges, and on March 31, all the schools posted their decisions online.

"I went home and checked Harvard first, and then Princeton, and then Brown ... and as they kept coming in I was just astonished. I couldn't even breathe," Rose said. "It was an amazing moment."

"I couldn't believe it," she added. "I thought I'd get in maybe one or two."

And now Rose has a big decision ahead of her. While she's always loved Yale's environment, Rose says she's also very interested in Harvard and Princeton. This week she'll have her last two college visits at Yale and Harvard.

"They're all such great schools," she said. "[I'll] try to see where I'll fit in the best."

Wherever Rose ends up, she says she plans to study political science and Russian literature.

She has until May 1 to decide.