“I just hate seeing students letting opportunities like this go because they can’t afford it.”

This was Hillary Diane Andales' reaction after learning that a graduate from Philippine Science High School (Pisay) missed his chance to study abroad due to financial constraints.

According to a news report, Pisay graduate Dominic Navarro had to pass up an offer from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM) because he cannot afford the required deposit for admission amounting to $55,000 or P2.6 million.

Navarro recently went viral on social media after receiving admission offers from Jacobs University in Germany, and US-based colleges Bentley University and UWM.

Andales, also a graduate of Pisay and now a scholar from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said that while scholarships and financial aids exist, they are hard to find for international students like them.

“This is the hardest thing I have to tell public high school students when they ask me for help on US college admissions,” Andales wrote on Twitter.

She believes that “every single Pisay student” can qualify to a school abroad, however, Andales added that “almost no one” can afford to pay at least $55,000 a year.

Public universities in the US such as the University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Los Angeles; and Navarro’s top choice UWM offer much less aid to international students, according to Andales.

Meanwhile, the most generous schools like MIT and Harvard Universityy are often “the most selective.”

“So it's really a hard game to play. It is possible to have the cost cut a lot, P80,000 per year to 0, or P70,000 per year to P2,000 by getting into a selective uni and/or getting lucky with ,” she said.

“I used to joke that kahit pa ibenta ng buong pamilya ko lahat ng assets namin, di ko pa rin maaafford yung pagbayad ng P80,000 per year sa current school ko (that even if we sell all our family’s assets, I still can't afford to pay P80,000 per year at my current school).”

The sad reality, as Andales pointed out, is that scholars “don’t just have to be smart. They have to be rich as well.”

Andales received scholarship offers from MIT and six other universities after she bagged the 2017 Breakthrough Junior Challenge for a video explanation of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

She is currently a sophomore at MIT, majoring in Physics and minoring in both Astronomy and Philosophy.