An Alabama highschool senior was once accredited to greater than 15 best universities and awarded a complete of greater than $2 million in scholarship gives.
Rotimi Kukoyi were given into Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt and Duke universities, amongst others. In the long run, he determined to wait the College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill the place he’s going to learn about Well being Coverage and Control at the college’s prestigious Morehead-Cain Scholarship.
“With this scholarship, I’m ready to select the trail much less traveled by way of—the street no longer taken—and outline my very own adventure. And feature all of it paid for,” Kukoyi wrote on Instagram final month. “At UNC, I’m hoping to put the rules of a occupation riding well being fairness in our country.”
Kukoyi was once the primary Black Nationwide Advantage Pupil at his college in Hoover, Alabama. He instructed ABC Information he was once impressed to use to a couple of faculties after showing at the “Jeopardy!” Youngster Match as a freshman in 2018 and connecting with high-achieving scholars from around the nation.
“As a kid of immigrants who got here to the US to safe a greater long term for themselves and their kids during the American training machine, I’ve at all times aspired to graduate from highschool,” he wrote in a Would possibly Instagram submit.
“The previous 13 years of arduous paintings have paid off, and I’m extremely constructive for what lies forward. I’m grateful to the shut relationships that experience supported me right through this adventure, and I’m excited to observe my pals proceed to prevail from afar.”
He wrote in any other submit that opting for a faculty was once “essentially the most agonizing factor I’ve ever finished,” and after considering each Harvard and Yale, he settled on UNC as a result of the liberty its scholarship program would supply.
His resolution to pursue a occupation in public well being was once impressed partially by way of the pandemic, he instructed ABC Information. He needs his legacy to be about serving to other people, he stated.
“COVID truly sparked [my interest in public health] as a result of that was once the primary time that I truly noticed how transparent the well being inequities have been,” Kukoyi instructed ABC information. “African American citizens had a miles upper probability of death from COVID than white American citizens.
“It was once virtually like there have been two separate pandemics impacting our country, and we noticed [some people] marginalized and impacted far more.”
