Word: hernandez
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When the letter from Exeter arrived, Hernandez was so unsure of her English, she thought she had somehow misunderstood. She slipped it into her backpack, and when she got to school the next day, she asked her counselor to read it and tell her what it said. Not only had she been accepted, she’d been given a scholarship, only two years after arriving in the United States...
...Hampshire, where Exeter is located, was a culture shock. Hernandez had never seen snow before, and was dismayed at the absence of Spanish-language television and radio. Her best friend at Exeter was African American, and when the two would go to church every Sunday, little children would stare at them all through the service. “We were the only two people of color in the whole church. They were just intrigued,” she says good-naturedly. Still, Hernandez raves about Exeter’s academic and extracurricular opportunities, and says she felt welcomed and supported...
When it came time to apply to college, Hernandez faced a quandary: as a Mexican citizen, she was considered an international student, and thus was ineligible for financial aid at most universities. Of the schools she applied to, only Stanford and Harvard could afford to give international student aid. This required getting into two of the most selective schools in the country, but Hernandez breezed through the admissions process, and chose Harvard...
Having already thrived in a New England boarding school, Harvard wasn’t much of an adjustment. Still, the support system that had so nourished Hernandez at Exeter didn’t seem to exist at Harvard. “At Exeter, there was a community of people who looked out for you. At Harvard, you have to build that community for yourself, you’re on your own. That was the hardest thing. For a whole semester, I struggled...
...says she felt lost in a place of Harvard’s size, and missed the proactive advising system at Exeter. It was only when Hernandez got involved with RAZA, the Mexican-American student group, that she began to feel at home. “I finally felt that there was a group of people that knew where I was coming from,” she says. “I felt I had found a group where I could belong...