SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 2013 • T HE BULLETIN D S
sc oo su en isoncou • Impoverished teen achieves 9full-ride offers to elite universities By Diana Lambert The Sacramento Bee
S ACRAMENTO, Cali f . — Lloyd Chen can't afford the $70for a high school yearbook. His family can't pay for a graduation party or a tr ip abroad. But the Laguna Creek High valedictorian has something his fellow g r aduates don't: nine full-ride offers to elite universities. The Elk Grove, Calif., teen, who just graduated with a 4.79 grade-point average achieved the rare feat of acceptance by all nine schools to which he applied: Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, M assachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of C alifornia campuses atBerkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego and Davis. He chose Harvard. "It's been my dream since I was 8 years old," said Chen, 17. His dream came true in December, when Harvard sent an acceptance letter. "It was the happiest moment of my life," Chen said. The Cambridge, Mass., universityhad an acceptance rate of 5.8 percent for its incoming fall 2013 class. Only six students in the Sacramento, Calif., region were admitted into H arvardthisyear from the 234 who applied — an even lower 2.6 percent rate — according t o Suzy Underwood of t h e Harvard Club of Sacramento.
Chen's perse v erance showed itself in middle school when he decided he needed a laptop computer and a camera for hisstudies. He purchased candy at a store and resold it to students after school to earn money to buy the equipment. He writes of his mother's growing despair over the family's poverty in his college essay. He also writes about her efforts to keep the family afloat, including repeated efforts to scrape togethermoney to repair their 20-year-old Nissan. The car's upkeep proved essentialLloyd's freshman year afterhe asked to attend Mira
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with prodding from his mother and Laguna Creek counselor Alycia Sato, who became
Loma High School to enroll in its acclaimed International Baccalaureate program. Early each weekday, Lloyd and his mother piled into the old Nissan to drive from Elk Grove to Mira Loma High in Arden Arcade. Yun said she couldn't afford to make the 38-mile round-trip commute twice each day, so she waited for Chen all day, sometimes sitting in the car reading the newspaper, or taking walks nearby as he took his classes. Chen didn't want to leave Mira Loma after his freshman year, but he finally relented
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Laguna Creek had just started its own IB program, and Chen was one of the first to sign on. Founded in 1968, the IB program prepares students for rigorous college study, allows them to earn university credits and helps them gain admission to top colleges. The move didn't hurt Chen. H e scoreda 34 ou tofa possible 36 on his ACT college readiness test. He ranked first in his graduating class and will take the podium at Sleep Train Arena today as the school's valedictorian. "I'm so happy for him,
Randy Pench / Sacramento Bee/ Mcclatchyrrribune News Service
Laguna Creek High School senior Lloyd Chen, 17, and his senior classmates are congratulated on their upcoming graduation by students at Foulks Ranch Elementary School in Elk Grove, Calif. Chen, who graduated with a 4.79 grade-point average, will be going to Harvard University. because he has been work- harder than anybody." "Most people complain. He ing hard s ince elementary school," Yun said. "He's not doesn't complain," she added. t hat smart. Bu t h e w o r k s "I'm really proud of him."
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"I was so happy for him,"
said Carmen Chen, who has been friends with Lloyd Chen since they attended school at Barbara Comstock Morse Elementary in Sacramento. "His dream to go to Harvard came true. I honestly didn't have a huge reaction, because I knew all along that he would get in." Achieving t h a t H a r v ard dream didn't come easily to the boy who grew up so poor that most of his clothes were h and-me-downs. Chen, h i s mother and an older sister live in a two-bedroom apartment paid for by federal rent assistance. They scrape by on government aidfor expenses. Another sister is away at college. His mother, Susie Yun, emigrated from South Korea three years before Chen was born. She has been diagnosed with clinical depression. His father left the family around the time Chen was born. "Throughout my l i fe, I've learned to grow up w ithout luxuries," he wrote in his college application essay. "I don't need fancy clothes. I d on't need expensive SAT classes. I don't even need a father. "I have something more valuable than l uxuries: the foundation to grow and prosper," he added. "My circumstances have not brought me down, but instead, have made me stronger." Despite an annual sticker p rice that h a s c l i mbed t o roughly $ 6 0,000, H a r vard a nd other t o p-ranked p r i vate universities waive all at• tendance costs for students whose families earn less than $60,000 a year. The University of California waives tuition and student fees for students whose families earn less than
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$80,000. Although top u n iversities offer talented, low-income students generous financial aid packages, researchers from Stanford and Harvard found in a March study that the "vast majority of very-high achieving students who are low income do not apply to any selective college or university." Chen was an anomaly. Besides his nine full-ride offers, Chen received a Gates Millennium Scholarship that pays for his undergraduate and graduate studies. Chen plans to use it for graduate school and to pick up undergraduate costs that Harvard doesn't cover, ensuring that he does not have to take a campus job.
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