11/15/2025
She built a plane at 14. MIT waitlisted her anyway. Then she showed them what they almost missed.
In 2010, a 16-year-old Latina girl from Chicago submitted her application to MIT.
Her name was Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, and on paper, her application should have been extraordinary.
She had built a fully functional single-engine airplane in her garage—at age 14. She had taught herself to fly it. She had documented the entire construction process on YouTube. She was one of only 23 women—out of 300 students—selected as a US Physics Team semifinalist.
She was a first-generation Cuban-American from Chicago Public Schools. Not the typical pipeline to elite universities. She knew she had to be twice as good to get half as far.
She was twice as good. The plane she built proved it.
MIT waitlisted her anyway.
It was devastating. Sabrina had dreamed of attending MIT since childhood. To be told "maybe, but not yet" felt like having her lifelong dream questioned.
But then something remarkable happened.
Two MIT professors—Allen Haggerty and Earll Murman—saw Sabrina's video documenting her airplane construction. Their reaction was immediate and visceral.
"Our mouths were hanging open," Haggerty later told reporters. "Her potential is off the charts."
They rallied behind her. They fought internally to get her admitted. They showed the admissions office what they were about to miss.
MIT reconsidered. Sabrina got in.
But she never forgot that initial rejection.
Years later, she told the Chicago Tribune: "It was a bit of a blow. At some level, I'm glad...because if I had a safety school, I don't know if I could have pushed myself off the wait list."
She felt she had something to prove.
And prove it she did—in ways that exceeded anyone's wildest expectations.
Sabrina became the first woman to win the prestigious MIT Physics Orloff Scholarship.
She graduated in just three years—while still a teenager—with a perfect 5.00 GPA, the highest possible score at MIT. She tied for the top GPA in the entire institute.
She was the first woman to graduate #1 in MIT Physics in 20 years.
Her first academic paper was accepted by the Journal of High-Energy Physics within 24 hours of submission—almost unheard of in academic publishing, where peer review typically takes months.
By graduation, NASA had offered her a job. Jeff Bezos personally offered her a position at Blue Origin, his space company.
She turned them all down.
"I want to understand how the universe works," she explained simply, "not make billionaires richer."
Instead, Sabrina enrolled at Harvard for her PhD in theoretical physics, studying under renowned physicist Andrew Strominger. Her research focused on some of the most complex questions in all of science: quantum gravity, black holes, spacetime, and celestial holography—the mind-bending concept that information at the edges of the universe might encode the entire cosmos.
At age 25, her work was cited by Stephen Hawking in one of his final papers before his death.
Let that sink in. Stephen Hawking—one of the greatest physicists who ever lived—cited her research.
But Sabrina's journey wasn't just about personal brilliance, as extraordinary as that brilliance was.
It was about navigating a field that was systematically designed to exclude people like her.
The statistics tell the brutal story:
Hispanics make up nearly 20% of the US population but earn only 8% of STEM degrees. Women earn just 28-35% of STEM degrees in higher education. The first woman to earn a PhD in physics did so less than a century ago—in 1929.
Sabrina was acutely aware of these barriers. Being one of only 23 women among 300 Physics Team semifinalists showed her exactly how underrepresented women and minorities were in physics.
The experience changed her.
She began advocating for women and girls in STEM. She worked on a documentary to encourage young women and minorities to pursue science. She became involved with Michelle Obama's Let Girls Learn initiative, earning an invitation to the White House.
She promoted STEM education for girls in Cuba and Russia, receiving recognition from the Annenberg Foundation and the US Embassy in Moscow.
She spoke at conferences. She appeared on panels. She used her growing platform to open doors for others climbing behind her.
But being a role model came with its own crushing burden—the pressure placed on women of color in science who are, as one article put it, "scrutinised under multiple prejudicial lenses."
She was expected to be perfect. To represent her entire demographic. To never stumble. To be both a groundbreaking physicist AND a spokesperson for everyone who looked like her.
She handled it by focusing intensely on her work. She didn't own a smartphone. She avoided social media—no Facebook, no Instagram, no Twitter. She updated only her website, PhysicsGirl, with her academic accomplishments.
When journalists started calling her "the next Einstein," she pushed back hard.
On her website's "Media Fact-Check Sheet," she wrote simply: "I am just a grad student. I have so much to learn. I do not deserve the attention."
That humility, combined with her extraordinary talent, made her story even more powerful.
After earning her PhD from Harvard in 2019 with—yes—another perfect GPA, Sabrina completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton's Center for Theoretical Science.
In 2021, at age 27, she joined the faculty at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, one of the world's leading centers for theoretical physics research.
She founded and now leads the Celestial Holography Initiative, directing a team of researchers tackling one of physics' biggest unsolved puzzles: uniting our understanding of spacetime with quantum theory by exploring whether our universe might be encoded as a hologram.
She works in the same intellectual tradition as Einstein, Hawking, and her mentor Strominger—exploring questions that most people can't even understand, let alone answer.
And she does it while carrying the weight of representation.
Every paper she publishes, every talk she gives, every student she mentors opens the door a little wider for the next Latina girl, the next first-generation immigrant, the next kid from public schools who dreams of understanding the universe.
Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski's story isn't just about genius—though she is undeniably, extraordinarily brilliant.
It's about what happens when institutions almost overlook someone because they don't fit the expected mold.
It's about proving yourself when you shouldn't have to.
It's about succeeding brilliantly in spaces that weren't designed for you.
MIT waitlisted her because they couldn't see past their own assumptions about what a physics genius looks like.
She made them reconsider by showing them undeniable proof they couldn't ignore.
Then she exceeded every expectation they might have had—and then some.
She built a plane before she could legally drive a car.
She earned perfect GPAs at the world's most demanding universities.
She was cited by Stephen Hawking.
She rejected job offers from NASA and billionaires to pursue pure research into the fundamental nature of reality.
And now she's trying to explain how the entire universe works—while simultaneously working to ensure that the next generation of physicists includes more faces that look like hers.
Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski proved something profound:
Brilliance doesn't wait for permission.
Talent can't be waitlisted forever.
And sometimes the people institutions almost reject become the ones who define the field.
She didn't just get into MIT.
She showed them—and the entire world—what they almost missed.
~Old Photo Club
