Student Profile: Lucy Matson ’22

By Lauren M. Gross

After they walk across the stage, newly capped and gowned graduates of Delone Catholic High School, many members of the Class of 2022 will travel to college. Some will stay local, some will stay in-state but be farther away, and some will leave the state.

None will travel farther than Lucy Matson, who has been accepted to Aberystwyth University, on the west coast of Wales. Her college experience will be thousands of miles from home, in a country with different customs and traditions, and no easy way to pop home for a long weekend.

Lucy is looking forward to it with excitement. In addition to graduating from Delone Catholic this spring, she will graduate from Carroll Community College with an associate’s degree in arts and sciences.

In Wales, she plans to major in wildlife conservation. “Wildlife conservation is a very rare major in the United States; there are only about 20 schools in the U.S. that offer it, and it’s geared more towards fish and game or zoology,” she explained.

“My ultimate goal is to get a graduate degree in primatology. I hope to work with chimpanzees,” she added.

As for why Aberystwyth? “Wales just seemed interesting,” she said. She has been to Europe and wants to go back, and she loves to travel. During quarantine, she Google-searched for colleges in Wales.

Since middle school, she has planned to get her associate’s degree through a dual enrollment opportunity that Delone Catholic afforded her to save money. She has worked hard, and for the Fall 2021 semester, she made Dean’s List. Currently, she is on track to graduate with the highest level of honors due to her GPA.

In the fall semester, she worked at Carroll Community College as a tutor. This year, the school started a new program called dedicated tutoring. The program assigns a tutor to every introductory statistics class. The tutor runs weekly review sessions with the class or section to which they are assigned. The failure rate for statistics is higher than some of the other classes, so the goal of the program is to lower the failure rate and to provide additional support to those who are struggling.

Various students and employees who have taken this class, or who have a strong background in statistics, were asked to participate. Lucy took statistics over the summer and earned an A in the course. Her professor then recommended her to this program as she was one of the highest-achieving members in his class.

She was offered the job and was given two dual enrollment sections of statistics. She works with a section from South Carroll High School and a section from Winters Mill High School. It’s one of the ways Delone Catholic has prepared her for life.

At Aberystwyth, she will join a student body of more than 8,000 students studying across three academic disciplines and 17 departments.

“The school has a very global mindset. Their alumni are doing amazing things. There are a lot of fieldwork classes,” she said, adding that she will be able to study in Borneo for a year, working with chimpanzees, getting hands-on fieldwork experience.

The town itself is a small beach town, geared towards conservation. Beyond that, the program itself “ticked all the boxes,” she said. The application process was easy, and her tuition is less expensive, even as an international student, than she would get at an in-state school in Maryland.

She received an inclusive accommodation scholarship, which means she’ll have free room for her time at the school.

Her parents, she said, are happy for her with the amazing opportunity the school offers, but are sad and will miss her. Her classes don’t start until mid-October, and run through mid-June. She’ll leave on Sept. 10.

Although her associate’s degree classes don’t transfer, American applicants to the school need to have either two college classes or two Advanced Placement® classes with scores of 3 or higher. Lucy more than meets those benchmarks, but her associate’s degree made her a better candidate for application.

“Delone Catholic has always had a higher expectation for educational greatness, this can be seen in our grading policy. Universities in the U.K. are a bit more rigorous than schools in the U.S. Because there are no general education courses in U.K. programs, the University needs American students to go above and beyond in their high school education in order to prove that they are ready for a British university. Delone Catholic’s many AP and Honors courses have given me that opportunity. Staff such as Mrs. Tompkins are also very supportive, and I was allowed to only take 6 credits this year as opposed to 6.5 in order to make time for my college courses. The high expectations have helped to cement the self-discipline which has already been instilled in my life. This allowed me to succeed in my dual enrollment courses to prove that I am ready for a British university. The Virtual High School courses offered by Delone Catholic have also allowed me to take courses related to my major as well. Becoming a high-achieving student at Delone Catholic made it so that I had faith that I could be successful in a British school. Being the Vice President of the International Club and befriending exchange students has also been very helpful in taking this step,” she added.

Lucy Matson '22