Jason Redmond / Star staff Oxnard 4/18/07: Pacifica High senior Sylvia Puglisi plays flute during symphonic band practice at school in Oxnard on Wednesday. MIT, Cal Tech, Columbia, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Amherst, Boston University are just some of the schools interested in her. Puglisi says she plans to major in physics.

At 17, Sylvia Puglisi wanted to have options.

She started filling out college applications last summer. When she finished that first wave, the Pacifica High School senior started again.

"More than 10, less than 20," she offered as the final count. Included in the pile was an application to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, a dream school for the future physics major.

The research university, known for its Nobel Prize winners, accepted just 13 percent of applicants this year, and physics typically is a male-dominated field.

"I thought it was the longest of long shots," said Sylvia, who scored 2,250 out of a possible 2,400 on the SAT and took six Advanced Placement classes her senior year.

Faculty and staff members at Oxnard's Pacifica were much more confident that MIT would accept their star student.

"We knew," Assistant Principal Bijou Beltran said. And once she got in, Beltran added, Sylvia would become the first Pacifica student at the prestigious East Coast school.

Sylvia found it online her first acceptance but refused to believe it until the letter from MIT came in the mail. Later that same day, she also got an offer from California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, which has 17 Nobel Prize winners.

"It's a little like opening two unrelated chocolate bars in the same day and happening upon two golden tickets," she wrote in her blog.

As the days passed, the acceptance list grew. Boston University, UC Berkeley, Reed, Stanford, Columbia, Tufts and UC Santa Barbara all were included in the "yes" pile.

Her only rejection came from Brandeis University in Massachusetts, and she was put on a waiting list at Harvard, where she could have taken classes once enrolled at MIT anyway.

Beltran and others at Pacifica celebrated her success and rooted for MIT, but Sylvia had started seeing the downside of having options. She like students throughout the country had until today to choose where to spend the next four years.

Caltech is a great school and a lot closer to home. UC Santa Barbara had offered her a scholarship, and several other schools had huge pluses as well.

Her parents Sarah Puglisi, a teacher in the Hueneme School District, and John Puglisi, superintendent of the Mesa Union School District were determined that Sylvia decide for herself.

"It's nice," she said about their parenting technique. "But also very unhelpful," she added, smiling.

Sylvia guessed that her mom thought MIT was a good choice, while her father preferred that his daughter, who had never even gone to summer camp, stay closer to home. She also estimated that Caltech or MIT would cost $40,000-plus a year, requiring a big student loan.

Sylvia has had a passion for physics since the eighth grade, but John Puglisi said he thinks that it was his daughter's diverse interests that made her stand out to colleges. She loved taking drama classes at Pacifica and has played flute for nine years. She also plays tenor saxophone in Pacifica's jazz band and is a gifted writer.

In the end, it was a trip to Caltech for a pre-frosh weekend that sealed her selection of the Pasadena school.

"Dorm life seemed particularly fun," Sylvia wrote in an e-mail. "The whole community was rather small and close, which was appealing to me."

She got to talk to a girl who was a physics major, not a simple feat. The male-female ratio is 7-3. For physics majors, however, it's closer to 9-1.

The research opportunities, the school's focus on theoretical physics, its small size, as well as the location and the ease of the transition each played a part in her decision.

"I just felt good about it," she said. And she hasn't given up her dream of going to MIT.

"I sort of aspire to get to MIT for grad school," Sylvia said, "when I'm a little older and more sure of myself so far from home."