Ex-Felon Gains Double-Ivy Status

by James Yu | September 15, 2008 at 4:13 pm

In the annals of the Ivy League there are countless tales of bright men and women who went astray. There was Harvard MBA graduate Jeffrey Skilling, who helped bring the Enron Corporation down to its knees. And then there was former Penn Professor Rafael Robb, who bludgeoned his wife to death in 2006.

So every once in awhile it's refreshing to hear about reversals of fortune that cut the opposite way. Meet one-time drug dealer Andres Idarraga. At the age of twenty Idarraga was given a felony and a 14-year prison sentence.  Ostensibly because jail sucked and there was little to do, Idarraga

began reading books — voraciously.  As he read, he began to dream, not about pimped-up cars and drug money, but about going to college, about doing something that he and his parents could be proud of.

After attaining his GED and receiving an early parole, Idarraga - whose parents emigrated to Rhode Island from Colombia - applied to Brown. He was rejected, so he excelled at another school, reapplied a year later, and got in. Now thirty, Idarraga is currently a 1L at Yale Law.

The question now is where's Idarraga's Lifetime movie deal?

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