Amina Mabizari couldn't control her tears after she read the text message from her father.

The 18-year-old's ability to articulate herself earned the Alief ISD senior one of 100 spots in the prestigious United States Senate Youth Program in Washington, D.C., yet in that moment in March, she was unable to compose herself. Her father had opened a letter from Yale University, advising that Amina was likely assured a spot in the incoming freshman class.

And the acceptance letters kept coming. When she checked online in April, she saw a college acceptance letter from Princeton. Then came one from Columbia. Others arrived from Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania.

In all, Amina was accepted to seven of the Ivy League's eight institutions, with only Harvard putting her on a wait list. Each university only accepts 5 to 15 percent of applicants a year, making acceptance into just one unlikely for even high-achieving students. The Elsik High School senior is still shocked. She ultimately decided Monday to attend Yale.

"The reason I applied to so many schools is that I didn't think I would get accepted to any of them," Amina said. "It's funny to say now after being accepted, but it's kind of unheard-of in Alief to be accepted to such top-tier schools."

Alief ISD is a diverse district of 47,000 students in southwest Houston and other parts of Harris County.

An Arlington, Texas, student was accepted into six and a Houston student was accepted into four last year. It's been a long journey for Amina since a kindergarten teacher gave her mother some bad news: Her child was the lowest-performing student in the class, struggling to read and identify letters.

Amina's mother did not speak much English at the time but quickly picked it up after spending countless hours reading with Amina and helping her sound out letters and sounds. By the end of that school year, the kindergarten teacher said Amina had become her highest-achieving student.

The next year, she took a test and was classified as "gifted and talented." But it wasn't just Amina's smarts that likely impressed admissions officers in America's most storied colleges.

She was state president of the Texas Association of Student Councils, overseeing 1,300 schools across the state. She sits on Alief ISD Superintendent H.D. Chambers' advisory council and recently stepped down as president of Elsik High School's National Honor Society.

Amina only started on her college applications during winter break, spending the first week and a half perfecting her personal essay. She wrote about her parents' hands - how her father's had worked to scratch out a living for his family in Algeria after his father was killed in that country's Revolutionary War, and how Amina's father ultimately clutched a scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin.

She aspires to get into politics, a departure from her three older siblings, all of whom are on track to become doctors. Amina dreams of perhaps attending law school and becoming a senator.

But whatever she ends up doing, Amina said, she'll always be grateful for the resources and help she's gotten in Alief ISD. She said other students should never underestimate their ability to achieve.

"Never give into this idea that you are in any way less than someone from a different area," Amina said. "You are just as capable as anyone else."