Alabama Student Receives $2 Million In Scholarships From 15 Top Schools
Alabama is home to some really extraordinary people and it's time that the world sees it.
A huge shout out to this Alabama high school senior who is doing big things and hasn't even started college yet.
This Hoover, Alabama high school student first made waves by appearing on the Jeopardy teen tournament as a freshman in high school back in 2018. It was then that this high school student began connecting with high-achieving students from across the country which eventually sparked his interest to apply to multiple colleges.
The high school senior was accepted to more than 15 top universities across the country.
Not only that but he was awarded more than $2 million in scholarship offers. The colleges he was he was accepted to are schools that lots of people dream of attending, and he got into 15 of these top schools.
The list of schools he was accepted to includes Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Duke, Yale, and Harvard.
Back in May, the student made an Instagram post saying, "The past 13 years of hard work has paid off and I'm incredibly optimistic for what lies ahead. I'm thankful to the close relationships that have supported me throughout this journey and I'm excited to watch my friends continue to succeed from afar."
Shout out to this student for not only recognizing what helped him get where he is right now, but he's still ready to see his peers succeed. And that's admirable.
According to Huff Post, the student decided to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he plans to study health policy and management. He received a very prestigious scholarship from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill entitled The Morehead Cane Scholarship.
He wrote on an Instagram post last month "At UNC I hope to lay the foundations of a career driving health equity in our nation."
The scholar's name is Rotimi Kukoyi, and according to Huff Post, he was the first Black National Merit Scholar at his school in Hoover, Alabama.
"As a child of immigrants who came to the United States to secure a better future for themselves and their children through the American education system," he wrote on Instagram. " I've always aspired to graduate from high school."
According to Huff Post, Kukoyi told ABC News his decision to pursue a career in public health was inspired in part by the pandemic.
"COVID really sparked my interest in public health because that was the first time that I really saw how clear the health inequities were. African Americans had a much higher chance of dying from COVID than white Americans. It was almost like there were two separate pandemics impacting our nation, and we saw some people marginalized and impacted way more."
Shout out to Rotimi for that 13-year grind and taking a leap of faith and going to UNC-Chapel Hill. There's no doubt that you're going to do great things in school and in this world.