Selena Torres graduated valedictorian of her high school class at Carl Schurz High School, a public school located in northwest Chicago.
Today, she is a junior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign majoring in electrical engineering.
Like many Chicago public school (CPS) graduates, Torres’ path after high school did not take her directly to college. Although she had the requisite academic credentials and encouragement from teachers and school counselors to apply, she hesitated.
“My teachers had this vision of [me] going to college and doing very well, but every single day I’d hear the other side of what they would tell my community,” Torres said.
At the same time her teachers and counselors were telling Torres to apply, they were sending the opposite message to her peers.
“They would tell the rest of the students in my class, ‘You’re not going to go to college, you might have babies, you’re not going to be successful – and that’s a statistic,’” Torres said.
Feeling caught between these two divergent messages, Torres let the moment pass her by. After a year of living at home, she decided to take a chance and enroll in Truman College, one of the seven City Colleges of Chicago.
“I decided to come back just to see how it goes,” Torres said.
