Colombe C. Obono Eyono, a senior at Westville Girls’ High School near Durban, South Africa, was scrolling through her Netflix queue at 2 a.m. when she received a Harvard admissions notification. After ...

Torn between two schools, Ashley J. Vasquez Romo poked a hole on one side of an eraser and decided that the “poke” side would be Harvard, before throwing it up in the air. “I said if [the eraser] ...