2025 admissions: setting every record.

It’s with every emotion happening in my heart all at once that I want to share the final numbers from SOLA’s 2025 admissions season.

We received 5,385 applications from Afghan girls around the world.

From these applications, we shortlisted 794 students. We interviewed these students, many of them more than once.

From these 794 students, we’ve admitted 53 girls. We’ve waitlisted another 47 girls.

These 53 girls originally hail from 24 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. They’ll be joining their classmates in Rwanda, joining their sisters they never knew they had.

Our 2025 admissions season set every record. We’ve never received this many applications. We’ve never shortlisted this many students. And we’ve never enrolled this many students either, which we can do because we’re building our new Rwanda campus. We’ll start the school year in this new campus this fall. It creates so many opportunities. It creates so much hope.

And I feel hope today. But not only hope.

Our acceptance rate at SOLA is just under 1%. We said yes to 53 girls. We said no to almost 5,300 girls. 5,300 Afghan girls who want to do what should be the most common and ordinary thing in the world. They want to go to school.

Every emotion is happening in my heart all at once.

To every one of these 5,300 girls, I say: you are an inspiration to me. You are committed to living a life of dignity. I hope you continue to seek knowledge, and I hope you never give up. Never give up on yourself and on the future of Afghanistan.

To every one of these girls, I say: join us on SOLAx. Join us today. We offer a complete 7th and 8th grade curriculum. We offer STEM courses on the 9th grade level with 10th, 11th and 12th grades to come. We offer courses in storytelling, we offer ESL courses, we have more than 30,000 users studying with us, and it’s absolutely free.

SOLAx is growing. We built it for you. Join us, and grow with us.

To our 53 new students, I say: welcome. You are extraordinary young women. Your sisters are waiting for you on campus. This is your time now.

Thank you to our admissions team who worked so hard, for so many months, to make all of this possible. Some of you are SOLA alums, girls who studied with us in Kabul and who volunteered to join the team. You reviewed every single application, and you spoke to our applicants and their families with respect and empathy. I am so proud to have you here.

I choose to channel my emotions into action. I see the news from Afghanistan. I see the destruction in Kabul and in the provinces. I see Afghan women and girls. I see the Afghan people.

I will never look away. Never.

We will grow SOLAx and, later this month, we will open our 2026 admissions season. We’ll be making a public announcement about it very soon.

I’m glad you’re here with us. Standing with us. There is work to do, and we will do it.