A handful of universities are household names in every part of the country for one reason or another.
Alabama, Michigan and Southern Cal are known for athletic prowess. Miliary affiliations lure students to Citadel, Texas A&M and West Point.
Meanwhile, academics attracts students to Harvard, Princeton and MIT (or Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Educational quality and renowned research are understandably publicized far more than the annual tuition rates, which hover near 60 grand a year at these schools.
Anjalina Thomas, of Yukon, enrolled in the Pre-Engineering program at Canadian Valley Technology Center intent on sharpening her educational tools with hopes of positioning herself for consideration among elite academic institutions.
“It’s always been a goal of mine to attend a school like MIT,” she said. “A girl’s gotta dream, right?”
Just 11 undergraduate students from Oklahoma are currently enrolled at the Cambridge campus on the banks of the Charles River and in the shadow of the Boston skyline. The annual acceptance rate for MIT applicants worldwide is about 5 percent.
There will be at least one more Oklahoman next fall. Thomas, a Yukon High School senior, has been accepted. She will be among roughly 4,500 undergraduate students.
M.I.T. alumni include Apollo Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Fictional Marvel Comics character Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man) also completed coursework at MIT.
Thomas plans to major in mechanical engineering. Her mother, Sonia, is a petroleum engineer at Continental Resources in Oklahoma City.
“I want to work in product design,” she said. “I love to take a problem and solve it.”
Thomas said she chose CV Tech over the Oklahoma School of Science and Math, because she did not want to leave home yet.
“I knew a girl who went to CV Tech a couple years ago,” she said. “It’s STEM-focused education, and I like the small class sizes and the resources we have in the program.”
Thomas also recently learned she is Yukon’s only National Merit Finalist and one of three such finalists enrolled in CV Tech’s afternoon Pre-Engineering class. Roughly half of the 7,250 finalists nationwide are selected to receive a National Merit Scholarship of $2,500 and recognition as Merit Scholars, according to information provided by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.
She is excited about that possibility on the heels of earning Academic All-State honors. This is bestowed by the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence to only 100 outstanding public school seniors each year in Oklahoma in recognition of academic achievement, leadership and community service.
