A Nigerian-American 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 earns a record-breaking $2 million scholarship to attend any top US university of his choice.
Rotimi Kukoyi, a smart and brilliant Nigerian-American kid, was admitted to all 15 of the top institutions in the country as a result of his exceptional high school achievement.
Rotimi, a graduate of Hoover High School in Glendale, Alabama, was named the institution’s top student. As the son of immigrants from Nigeria, he claimed that he had always been motivated to complete high school in the United States.
He stated on Instagram, “I’ve always hoped to graduate from high school as a 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 of immigrants who immigrated to the United States to seek a better future for themselves and their 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren through the American educational system.
“The last 13 years of arduous labor have paid off, and I have a great deal of hope for the future. I appreciate my personal relationships for helping me along the way, and I look forward to following my friends’ career advancements from a distance, he continued.
After becoming the first-ever Black National Merit Scholar of the school, Rotimi also established a new exceptional benchmark for Black students in the institution.
He ultimately made the decision to enroll at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the United States, where he will use the esteemed Morehead-Cain Scholarship to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Health Policy and Management.
“With this scholarship, I’m able to choose the path less traveled by—the road not taken—and define my own journey. And have it all paid for,” Kukoyi wrote on Instagram. “At UNC, I hope to lay the foundations of a career driving health equity in our nation.”
Speaking on his decision to enrol for a health-related course, Kukoyi said he was inspired in part by the pandemic. He wants his legacy to be about helping people, he told ABC News.
“C-O-V-I-D really sparked [my interest in public health] because that was the first time that I really saw how clear the health inequities were. African Americans had a much higher chance of dying from COVID than white Americans,” Kukoyi told ABC news.
“It was almost like there were two separate pandemics impacting our nation, and we saw [some people] marginalized and impacted way more,” he added.
