Chatsworth High's Grant Wang hits the MIT jackpot
The 6-foot-6 senior volleyball star was first put on MIT's deferred list but learned during a tournament in Las Vegas that he has been accepted.
During a volleyball tournament trip to Las Vegas in March, Chatsworth coach Sina Aghassy confiscated all his players’ cellphones and put them in his backpack to make sure they focused on their sports assignment — with one exception. Anyone waiting to learn if they were accepted to a college could briefly have access to their phone. The players are standing in a hallway listening to their coach evaluate their performance when Grant Wang, the team’s star 6-foot-6 senior, decides to open his phone to check whether he got a message from MIT.
“I opened it up a couple minutes before it was supposed to come out and all I see is confetti,” he said. “I was in shock and all I did was make a noise. ” Aghassy, not knowing what the noise meant, said, “Can you quiet down a bit?
” “Five minutes into his talk, I started breaking down crying. I got overwhelmed by emotions,” Wang said. Volleyball standout Grant Wange of Chatsworth High has never received a grade other than A in high school.
(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times) Teammates didn’t know if it was good news or bad news as they saw his tears. “My teammate whispers to me. ” Wang tells the good news, “I got into MIT.