Brookfield Students Get Their College Acceptances

The Brookfield High Class of 2010 has long been regarded as an "achieving" one, but the proof, now, is in. College acceptance lists are on the web and at least five BHS seniors have gotten into Ivy League colleges, and more into colleges ranked among the top 35 in the U.S. — Johns Hopkins, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Chicago, Notre Dame, Rice and New York University among them — by U.S. News and World Report.

More remarkably, this success comes during what is shaping up to be among the most competitive college-app seasons ever. According to a Washington Post columnist tracking this year's admissions, most selective colleges have become even more selective in 2010, with a number reporting record-low admission rates.

"It was a great Easter weekend," says Mike DiScala,who got the thumbs-up from Yale as well as the University of Pennsylvania.  "A lot of my friends got all they wanted."  Ivy League colleges post their acceptances at 5 p.m. on April 1, and after that, says DiScala, "We just jumped up and down in the [BHS] parking lot."

Michelle Duong, who was accepted by many of the 12 colleges she applied to, is now deciding between Cornell and the University of Connecticut, where she's been offered full tuition.  "I'm just glad I don't have to do this again for four years," she says, already looking ahead to her medical-school applications.  "It's been exciting, and astonishing," she says of the college process.  "Our class has done very well."

DiScala, who says he's "99 percent certain" he'll go to Yale (disclosure: I interviewed both DiScala and Duong as a volunteer alumnus), knows his college-application success is due to luck as well as hard work and native intelligence. "It really comes down to what they need when they read your application," he says, "and there are like 27,000 of them!"  Qualified students are regularly rejected — as DiScala knows, since he didn't get into Brown or Princeton.

DiScala believes his class has bootstrapped itself into success.  "For me," he says, "freshman year wasn't that great" in terms of grades and learning — he did well, but not spectacularly.  Then some of the fellow '10s started really hitting the books, got academically engaged, the class reached critical mass... and bloomed.  Among the other studets getting into first-rate schools are Michael Becker, Victoria Townsend, Richard Diesso, Mark Timmerman, Sara Flood and Tom Prendergast (sorry for leaving any deserving students out — feel free to post any we missed in our comments section).

So now it's time to party-hearty, right?  DiScala laughs. "They're very clear at the bottom of the acceptance letter," he says, "that they expect you to maintain your standards.  And I've got some AP exams coming up."

It may be worth noting that BHS's best-known graduate in recent years, Scott Lutrus, turned down Ivy League acceptances to go to UConn, where he was a linebacker and co-captain of the football team.  He's now a senior, and a likely NFL draft pick next year according to sports-fan website Bleacher Report.