Hempstead teen who lost everything during Superstorm Sandy gets accepted to 7 Ivy League schools

HEMPSTEAD (WABC) -- For one 18-year-old student from Hempstead, picking a great Ivy League school to attend isn't a problem.

That's because Daria Rose got accepted into seven of them (she didn't apply to Columbia), and a few others as well.

"I was like, oh my God, I just got into Harvard," she said. "Then I checked Princeton, and I was like, oh my God I, just got into Princeton. And I checked Brown, I got in. It just kept going and going."

Rose, a Sacred Heart High School senior, received 14 acceptance letters. While a remarkable accomplishment on its own, considering what Rose and her family went through for the last year and a half truly makes her an inspiration.

"My sophomore year, Sandy hit," she said. "And you just never really think it can happen to you."

Rose's family lost everything in the storm, including their home.

"It was a shock," Rose's mother, Katrina Brooks, said. "I think for the first two weeks, I was in denial. We were in disbelief."

While their home was rebuilt, Rose, her mother, father and little brother had to move repeatedly to much smaller living spaces.

"It's hard being a teenager and losing all these clothes and makeup and jewelry," Rose said. "We had to move form hotel to hotel. We stayed with my grandmother for a couple of months, then moved back to a hotel."

Rose threw herself into her studies and never lost sight of her dream of going to an Ivy League school.

"It's easy to say I'm just going to lay here in a ball and cry and wallow in my own self pity," Brooks said. "I'd make sure she'd get up and put one foot in front of the other."

Rose took her experience through Sandy and turned it into admission essays that helped cement her place in the best schools in the country.

"After moving so much and meeting so many different people, I learned I can adapt and adjust to all these different situations and people," Rose said.

And her parents couldn't be prouder.

"It came as a blessing, because she had something really substantial to write about," Brook said. "Her truth, what she had gone through, what she survived."

Her next welcome dilemma is deciding which school to attend next fall.