Mahmoud Hassan was ecstatic when he got the acceptance letter.
All through high school, the 18-year-old had one goal in mind: get an engineering degree from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
But Hassan is from Damascus, Syria. And Friday, he had his hopes crushed through no fault of his own.
When President Trump signed an executive order on immigration, temporarily banning citizens from certain Muslim-majority countries, Syria was one of the seven.
“Now Trump’s orders will prevent me from going there,” he told CNN. “My dreams are basically ruined.”
Hassan had been looking forward to his journey to the Cambridge campus in the fall. He says he had been offered a scholarship.
He’s read and reread that letter from MIT dozens of times.
“Dear Mahmoud, On behalf of the Admissions Committee, it is my pleasure to offer you admission to the MIT Class of 2021! You stood out as one of the most talented and promising students in one of the most competitive applicant pools in the history of the Institute.”
Hassan doesn’t know what he’ll do next.