18-year-old homeless girl becomes Yale University student
On the eve of the new academic year, Viviana told The Huffington Post how she managed it and why she is now confident: we can always control our own lives and change them as we see fit.
Lenta.ru published a video in which Marquez opens an email from Yale University. As is easy to guess from the girl’s emotions, it informed her that she had been admitted.
The video about the letter was shot in January 2014, and in the fall of that year, Viviana left the Samaritan charity shelter, where she was temporarily living, for Connecticut to study in the famous halls of Yale. Now she is no longer a freshman but a sophomore, choosing her major: chemistry or history? She likes both, but by the third year she will have to decide for sure (at many US universities, you don’t have to choose a department upon admission; you can decide over the next couple of years). The happy ending seems almost fairy-tale-like, in the spirit of Harry Potter, but Marquez had to put in a bit more effort than J.K. Rowling’s hero.
Essay for success
“A borrowed laptop in my hands. I scour the surroundings for a network, constantly checking the list of connections, and finally: 'Connected.' Another Wi-Fi network hacked, another battle with a slow connection. A small victory, but there’s no time to celebrate – it’s time to start doing homework. Of course, it would be ideal to have my own internet, but first my family needs a home, and there isn’t one. Every day is a new challenge, a game of adaptation: I defeat the situation before it defeats me… In every game there are wins and losses. But I studied where five dollars had to feed a family of five,” begins the essay that Viviana Andazola Marquez submitted to The New York Times for a high school financial essay competition. It, along with several similar works from applicants, was deemed interesting and published. That was when Marquez pulled her lucky ticket.
After gaining media attention, her story caught the eye of Yale and several other prestigious universities. By the time she finished school, she had received several scholarships totaling about two million dollars and could choose from offers from Yale, Princeton, and Harvard.
“The perfect escape”
Viviana grew up in Thornton, Colorado. Her parents came to the United States from Mexico over 20 years ago. When the girl was little, the family owned two restaurants. Her parents divorced when she was in third grade. The former head of the family remarried, and four children (Viviana, her sister, and two brothers) remained in their mother’s care. When Viviana was 13, her mother was arrested for antisocial behavior and sentenced to six months of house arrest. Soon the woman lost her job, and the family had no money for rent. The mother and children lived sometimes in a shelter, sometimes in Samaritan houses, sometimes in motels. Around that time, Viviana, who even with such a lifestyle managed not to miss classes and study well, first realized that she wanted something entirely different for herself.
“I saw many examples around me of how my life could turn out in the future. And I decided: one way or another, I have to get out of all this,” says Marquez. She concluded that the best way out of an unfavorable environment was to get a truly worthwhile education. She began studying websites dedicated to education and grants offered by colleges and universities. It turned out that many universities in the country, even the most prestigious, can offer scholarships that fully cover the cost of tuition and on-campus living.
“I thought that getting into the Ivy League would be the perfect escape,” Viviana recalls.
Probably, in any marginalized environment, there are plenty of diligent and ambitious children, but this girl was also very lucky with her school mentors. Her school, York International School, was nothing special; in its entire existence, not a single graduate had entered the Ivy League, but the teachers, knowing Viviana’s family situation, tried to help as much as they could: they drove her to classes from the shelter or motel, and tutored her after school.
“I saw that there were more and more difficulties in her life, but her academic performance never suffered. At the same time, she never flaunted her homelessness but learned to simply live with it,” recalls Eric Munoz, Viviana’s school teacher. Later, he and his wife, not the girl’s parents, would drive her to Yale University to start her studies (air travel was simply an unaffordable expense for both Marquez’s father and mother).
“It’s like another world”
In 2013, using the website College Confidential, Viviana found a summer internship at Yale University called Young Global Scholars. For the first time, she left home for an extended period without her parents.
“I met students completely unlike me, with unlimited financial resources for education. It was a shock for me,” says Marquez. She recalls that the internship was not only interesting but also disappointing: she knew the gap that separated her from the other students, but they had no idea about her life (for example, that the girl had no idea where she would go after the summer program ended—her family still had no home).
However, her first visit to Yale showed that in the most important thing—academic performance—Viviana was no worse than others. “It was great to get a taste of a life that could become my future if I kept working,” says Marquez.
In the summer of 2014, before her senior year, Marquez managed to get an internship with Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America at Princeton University. Over seven weeks, students were taught, among other things, how to write a college admissions essay. Later, after returning home, Viviana received a letter from her Princeton mentor. She informed her that The New York Times was holding a student essay contest on the topic of personal finance and advised Marquez to participate. The girl followed her advice. As it turned out, not in vain.
A Happy Publication
The publication received many submissions, some of them written by children from low-income families. But it was in Viviana's essay that they saw strength of character and the potential to overcome difficulties.
When the country's leading universities offered Marquez scholarships, she had no one to truly share her excitement with. Her mother was cautiously happy, while her father even stated that, in his opinion, there was no need to go so far away to study. "I think they just didn't quite understand how big an achievement this is," Marquez notes, though she emphasizes that she does not hold it against her parents.
Publication in such a major outlet naturally made it impossible to arrive at Yale without attracting special attention. Many students recognized Viviana when she arrived on campus. "People came up to me and said my story seemed very inspiring to them. Some asked how my family was doing. Others asked me to tell the whole story in more detail. Overall, everyone reacted positively," says Viviana.
"I'm Like in Hogwarts"
Marquez says she immediately fell in love with the campus: "I felt that this was the home I never had." The sorting into residential colleges, the unique historic architecture remind her of the wizard school where Harry Potter studied. Many students, she says, are always complaining about the heavy schedule, but she is simply delighted.
"I'm trying to squeeze everything out of the opportunities I've been given. I understand that these are four years that will never repeat in my life. It's hard to be so far from home, but I'm glad that my mother now has a stable source of income. For my younger brothers, who are only four years old, it's also better that I'm here now," Marquez explains. She does not, however, specify whether her parents managed to find jobs and whether the family now has permanent housing.
Viviana says that getting into Yale is the moment she is most proud of in her life. "It's confirmation that my life is under my control. I can make myself into whoever I want."
Yale University was founded in 1701 and named after the British merchant and philanthropist Eli Yale. Together with Harvard and Princeton universities, it forms the so-called "Big Three." In 2015, Yale ranked tenth in the international QS World University Rankings.
Five U.S. presidents graduated from Yale University. Hollywood actors also studied there: Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver, Jodie Foster.
Among the 225 buildings on the Yale campus, there are many designed by famous architects of their time. Mansions, towers, lawns, courtyards, arches, and gates create a unique whole that many consider the most beautiful university campus in America.