Published : Friday, 30 Apr 2010, 5:51 PM CDT

PATTIE SHIEH

Reporter

HOUSTON - He may not have had all the advantages as those of other students, but, Gustavo Resendiz applied and got into virtually every Ivy League college.

"I was accepted to Harvard University, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, UT and Rice University," says the Debakey High School senior.

He's also getting a free ride.

"I knew that I needed a lot of financial aid to go anywhere really so I only applied to the schools that have really good financial aid,” Resendiz said. “So they are need blind and they meet 100% of need. I never expected to get into all of them."

That's because the senior class president comes from very humble roots. His parents never went to college.

"My parents never had much in ways of education. My mother doesn't speak English and my dad does speak it after many years of practice," he said.

Gustavo, who is ranked 4th in the highly competitive Debakey senior class, wasn't exactly a stellar student in middle school.

"Before my freshman year here I just kind of realized that to get where I wanted to get and to take advantage of all the opportunities that were available to me,” Resendiz said. “I had to change something."

After racking up a near perfect score in his one attempt at the SAT, Gustavo had a lot of doors opened to him. It was tough, but he made his choice. The middle child of three brothers, he plans to study science at the oldest institution of higher learning in our country.

"Harvard has a lot of name recognition but me and my family, we never really cared about that because, who are we going to tell? We don't really know anyone who knows what Harvard is," he said. "They're pretty excited more about the fact that I'm getting a good education."

http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/news/local/100430-free-ride-to-harvard----student-turns-life-around

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1307056&forum_id=1#14945809)