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Fitch student's college options open up after scoring 30 on first ACT test
By ROBERT CONNELLY
AUSTINTOWN
Abi Biroschak fell asleep during the math portion of her first attempt at the ACT test at the end of her sophomore year. She got a 30 – 10 points higher than the national average.
She said she had not slept well before the test, leading to her unintended nap.
Headed into her second ACT test Saturday, just months before she enters her senior year at Fitch High School, she felt confident. “I feel ready this time and a little less nervous,” she said Friday.
That confidence remained after she completed the test Saturday morning. “It was good,” she said.
Doors that Biroschak didn’t know existed have been opened since her ACT score was recorded. She has been accepted into two programs that have changed her college outlook.
“It’s like the biggest opportunity I’ve ever had to kind of go somewhere that I’ve always dreamed of. It always never seemed realistic to me, but once I got my score and looked into scholarships and the programs I’ve been accepted to have made me realize that I’m not just someone from Austintown that’s confined to [Youngstown State University]. I can go wherever I dream of and do whatever I dream of.”
Biroschak was hopeful for the ACT national average of 20 on her first attempt at the test last June.
“When I first got my score, it was an incredible shock. I honestly thought something was wrong,” she said.
On Saturday, she was hopeful for a 33, a benchmark for acceptance and scholarships. The average score at Ivy League schools is a 33, she pointed out.
Quest Bridge received 8,000 applicants this year, and Biroschak was one of 2,828 accepted. Quest Bridge is a program that seeks high-achieving students from low-income families and connects them with its 36 partner schools. Those include Emory, Princeton, Stanford and Yale universities; MIT; and the University of Pennsylvania, among others.
Biroschak will rank her top eight schools in October, then those schools will rank her. If there is a mutual interest, she is offered a full, four-year scholarship to attend that school. She will have in-person visits with her top eight schools and hopes to have made her college selection by December.
To get into Quest Bridge, she had to submit five short-answer essays, a 650 word personal statement, her transcript and grade-point-average along with volunteer service and extra-curricular activities.
She was one of 250 in the Quest Bridge program to be invited to a July 11 conference in Atlanta at Emory University. That’s a chance to meet with officials from each of the colleges.
Biroschak raised funds through a GoFundMe page – www.gofundme.com/abibiroschak – to attend the conference and will continue to raise funds there for college visits in the fall and other conferences. She has called the support from the Austintown schools and community “incredible.”
She is looking at majoring in psychology with a minor in chemistry, then going to medical school to become a psychiatrist.
“I’ve always loved the mental-health field. It’s always kind of something that I’ve been passionate about: helping other people, talking them through their problems and kind of just being a support system for everyone,” she explained.
Lauren Mechling is Biroschak’s guidance counselor and said Biroschak is opening doors for other students by finding a resource such as Quest Bridge.
“I’m excited about sharing that with other students. It’s great. There are definitely kids in the community that are low-income, but are high-achieving,” Mechling said. “It’s a great opportunity to get outside of the Valley and realize they do have an opportunity to go to some of the top-tier colleges in the country.”
Biroschak also was one of 35 students accepted into the Alexander Hamilton Friends’ Association. That is a three-year mentorship program that will have her travel to Seattle this summer and Guatemala next year to help build homes.
Biroschak said neither of her parents went to college, and she has two younger sisters.
“I’ve always been a role model for both of my sisters. Something like this, I’m showing them, ‘Don’t listen to what [others] tell you. You can’t just accept what you’ve been given. You have to take it and make more from it and go on to do bigger things than they’ll ever tell you,’” Biroschak said.