One season ends. Another soon begins.
I want to share news today about SOLA’s 2024 admissions season, which officially ended last month.
This is emotional news. More than just one emotion.
We opened our admissions season last year on March 23. We conducted our final interviews by mid-February.
I’ll start with the numbers:
We received 3,282 applications from Afghan girls around the world. This was an all-time high; our previous record came during the 2023 admissions season with 1,950 applications received.
From these applications, we shortlisted 516 girls.
Of these 516 girls, we’ve admitted 39 students. We’ve waitlisted another 30.
These 39 girls originally hail from 23 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.
That is a roughly 1% acceptance rate.
These are the numbers. We’re working closely with our partners at the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) to bring our new students to us on a rolling basis.
I wish I could tell you that joy is all I feel today. Joy for these new students, and joy as I think back at the extraordinary work done by so many of my colleagues and SOLA graduates over the past 11 months. So many people, all working so hard to make these numbers what they are.
And I do feel joy. Of course I do.
But not only that.
We ask every applicant what she’ll do if she doesn’t get to come to SOLA. I remember the girl, 14 years old, who told us what she’d do. “If I don’t come to SOLA,” she said, “I’ll become a mother.”
She’s 14.
I remember the girl who in her interview was telling us about her family and her life and right in the middle of everything, she stopped and she asked, “Why is it ok that I can’t go to school?”
You’d think, maybe, that these conversations would become a blur over the weeks and months. But some stories linger, and some faces linger, and some voices linger.
“Why is it ok that I can’t go to school?”
For any girl who wants it, there’s SOLAx. This wasn’t an option for us at this time last year, but it’s an option for us now. SOLAx turns 1 year old at the end of March. When we launched, we were well aware of the drastically limited educational opportunities for so many students in refugee and diaspora communities. We aspired to enroll 10,000 students in our first year. We’re at 18,000+ learners as you read these words today. SOLAx is so powerful, and it’s still growing, and we’re growing in Rwanda too – there’s a lot more that I’ll be sharing about that very soon.
But we need to do more. The need is there. These voices are real. These girls are real girls.
SOLA shouldn’t be an Afghan girl’s only option. It shouldn’t, but for so many of these girls who applied, it is. The end of admissions shouldn’t be a time of sadness, but for so many of these girls, it is. For so many of us, too. But I think there’s hope along with the sadness. Hope, and reasons to celebrate.
“My current situation is like a dark cloud covering the moon,” one girl told me. “I hope that SOLA can become that force in myself that helps me remove that dark cloud so I can shine.”
Our 2025 admissions season opens this month.
Real voices, real girls. We can do more, and we will.