*Seventeen-year-old Lamont Newell has spent most of his life without a permanent address. Now, he has his next one locked in: Columbia University.
The Los Angeles native and valedictorian at Verbum Dei Jesuit High School was accepted to 65 colleges before committing to the Ivy League institution, ABC News reports. “I’ve been more than ready,” he told ABC News. “I always wanted to leave California and explore parts of the world.”
Homelessness shadowed much of his upbringing, though Lamont is matter-of-fact about the experience. “We’ve always been moving my whole entire life,” he said. “I couldn’t give you an age where we were homeless because it was from a time span, but those were the main issues.”
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Rather than dwelling on hardship, Lamont leaned into structure where he could find it – after-school programs and basketball all played a role in keeping him grounded through high school. His teachers at Verbum Dei were equally important to his journey.
“My biology teacher, she’s actually one of the directors in the robotics [team]. She also nominated me, my sophomore year, to go to NASA in Houston, which actually sparked my engineering [interest],” he said.
His decision to apply to 65 schools was also deeply personal, rooted in a promise he made to himself on behalf of his mother. “The main reason [I wanted to apply to so many schools] was my mom didn’t get to go to the college she wanted to go. She didn’t really get to apply as many as she wanted to. So my plan was … to do the direct opposite,” he explained.
Lamont now plans to major in industrial engineering at Columbia and study abroad in Egypt.
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