I got a great education at a historically black university, and so much more

LEE HALL
FLORIDA A&M UNIVERSITY

'You want to go to school where?' But in four short years, my institution built me up and placed me on the shoulders of giants.

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania  --  I’ll never forget one of the final conversations I had with my high school career counselor.

He’d advised me through four years of Cambridge and AP classes, SAT and ACT prep courses, seven rigorous college applications, countless scholarship applications and, eventually, seven equally attractive college acceptance letters.

It was down to the wire: March of my senior year and I had yet to decide where I was going to college or how I was going to pay for it. Despite many “generous” financial aid packages, it looked as though I would have to take out a loan to help pay for school.

The day before one of our last “college readiness” sessions of the year, an academic  counselor from Florida A&M University, Florida’s only public historically black college or university and the largest single-campus HBCU in the United States, had approached me in my high school’s front office.

“How would you like a full scholarship to go to college?” he asked.  I thought it was a joke. Who drove for hours just to hand someone a letter with an offer for tens of thousands of dollars?

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