Congrats! You’re the first in your family to get into college. Now what?
Huanying Yeh’s academic ambition began in 2016 when her family moved to Sacramento, California, from Taiwan. She started high school barely able to speak English.
Her parents would write words from the dictionary on flashcards “and encourage me to join them for a study session,” she remembers.
In 2020, Ms. Yeh was accepted at highly selective Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, which her family couldn’t afford. She hoped she would qualify for need-based financial aid.
That year, the university joined the Kessler Scholars Collaborative, an initiative designed to assist first-generation students academically and financially. Ms. Yeh, whose parents never finished college in Taiwan, became one of the school’s first recipients.
As educators wrestle with the best way to
