According to Berebichez, she was a curious girl, After passing an advanced placement test, she was accepted for a Wien scholarship at
Brandeis University in Massachusetts where she at first continued her studies in philosophy. Here, she encountered her first science course, an intro-course to Astronomy and in her senior year she decided she should give physics a try. Inspired by
Edward Witten's previous switch from history to physics, she was allowed to switch from philosophy to physics and to skip the first two years of the physics major after passing a test in
vector calculus. After studying math and physics over the summer for 12 hours each day she passed the test. In the end, she completed the four years physics curriculum in two years and graduated from Brandeis
summa cum laude with highest honors in physics and philosophy. After Brandeis, she returned to Mexico where she completed a master's in physics. She won a merit-based full scholarship from the Mexican government and went on to complete a PhD in physics from Stanford in 2004. While at Stanford, she worked with Nobel laureate
Steven Chu from 1998 and co-created the Association for the Advancement of Women in Physics with another female student. It was through her interviews with professors, that she discovered that she was going to become the first woman from Mexico to earn a PhD in physics from Stanford. ==Career==