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Elizabeth Murillo said she was counting down the seconds until the day she would find out her fate.

Then, on December 1, she opened her e-mail and read with surprise and joy that she had won a full-ride scholarship to Wellesley College, and automatically joined an elite group of students nationwide who would not have to worry about paying for college.

“I was really shocked, I didn’t expect it,” Murillo, 17, said. “I was competing against 3,000 really good applicants; it still feels unbelievable.”

Starting this fall, and for the next four years, Murillo will receive $57,000 a year to attend college through the QuestBridge Program, a national nonprofit organization that helps match low-income, high-achieving students to the nation’s top colleges and universities, sometimes with full-ride scholarships.

Murillo is one of three seniors from Firebaugh High School who has been accepted into top-tier universities through the QuestBridge program.

Six students from Firebaugh High School were finalists for the full scholarships to top-tier schools, and three were chosen. Nationally, 321 students are chosen for admittance and scholarships. The other two Firebaugh High seniors are Maritsa Negrete and Rick Rodriguez.

Murillo said she plans on studying East Asian Languages and Literature, particularly because she’s always had an interest in Asian languages and culture. In fact, she is President of both the Chinese Club and Japan Club, and has taken Mandarin classes and frequents Japanimation conventions.

She is fascinated with Asian culture and said that she enjoys studying it because it’s “a lot of fun.”

After she graduates high school this summer, she’ll get to experience that culture first hand when she travels to Beijing to study abroad for two weeks.

With her studies, she is thinking of going into business, marketing, or translating, she said.

Her mother, Maria Sanchez, said she is not surprised at all at what her daughter has accomplished so far.

“As a child, she didn’t like to play with dolls, she just read and wrote a lot, and her teachers said she would be a good writer if she kept it up,” Sanchez said. “I can’t be more proud of her; I always told her if she willed it, she could do it.”

While Sanchez said she admits that having her daughter attend college on the East coast for four years will be difficult, she understands it will benefit her future, and that makes it easier. 

“I’ll be sad because she’ll always be my baby, but she needs to get ahead,” she said.