For the better part of most days, Grace Lee is silent.

A pharmacy student in year four of a six-year pharmacy program at Rutgers University, she can usually be found studying. Even on this day — the first of spring break — quiet blankets the apartment she shares with three other students at the university's Livingston campus.

But when Lee, 22, approaches her microphone, the singing voice that jumps out of the stillness is anything but soft. As she sings,she grows louder and louder, like a storm no one saw coming.

Within moments, Lee's fists are clenched and the warm, wide breadth of her song washes over the room like blinding sunlight, crashing through the silent space to ensure at least a few neighbors will take notice. The roaring delivery makes the microphone she uses seem like a joke.

Rutgers student Grace Lee performs 'Let It Go' in her Rutgers dorm room. Lee's cover of the Oscar-winning song from 'Frozen' has drawn 4 million views on YouTube and is now a top pick in a Ryan Seacrest cover contest.

"Let it go!" Lee proclaims, "Let it go! Can't hold it back an-y more," she sings. And she doesn't.

The Rutgers student claims more than 4 million YouTube views for this song — the Oscar-winning power ballad from Disney's "Frozen."

Her cover of "Let it Go" is now a contender in a contest for best YouTube rendition of the dramatic track. And she's done it all without any formal training.

Before she won over those virtual millions with her forceful voice, Lee was reluctant to sing a single chorus, even for friends.

"I never really liked performing in front of my roommates," she says. "I was really shy."

It was YouTube, she says, that helped her let all that go. Nowadays, those roommates record Lee when she busts out ballads in the shower.

Now, she says, "I make the only noise here."

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Lee spent her elementary years in the Fort Lee and Edgewater area.

"I used to love mimicking other peoples' voices as a child," she says, whether that meant squeaky cartoon characters or the powerhouse singing of Whitney Houston and Christina Aguilera.

She sings, in part, because "it's just a carefree zone," she says, and couldn't be more different than the academic rigors of pharmacy school.

Made famous by the Broadway singer Idina Menzel, Lee adores "Let it Go" because of its "theatrical feel," she says, one that allows her to stretch those arresting vocals to their greatest heights.

After her family moved to Plainsboro, Lee attended West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North. When she's not at Rutgers, she lives with her parents, who are now back in Edgewater.

Though Lee didn't attend voice lessons growing up, she performed in a local production of "Beauty and the Beast," ("I was one of the dishes" ), and sang in an a cappella group in high school. Last year, Lee belted out the national anthem at a Scarlet Knights basketball game.

Now, thanks to her affinity for a song beloved by children and Oscar voters alike, Lee has gotten a fair bit of attention for being a YouTube hit. She's made it to the second round of a Ryan Seacrest contest. Her fans can vote up to 12 times per day at ryanseacrest.com/category/contests.

Grace Lee performed in a 'Frozen' sing-along on 'Good Morning America' last month.

But Lee had no hand in entering her video. A representative for Seacrest tweeted and emailed her, saying that her cover would be in the running, and that she should get her friends and family to vote. In January, VH1 named Lee's cover its No. 1 YouTube rendition of "Let it Go." The next month, "Good Morning America" invited her to perform as part of a "Frozen" sing-along.

And this June, when national games come to New Jersey, she's slated to sing at the Special Olympics.

"This is the biggest thing that's happened," she says of the online contest.

"I actually had my first fan encounter on campus," Lee says. A student waved her over, and she wondered if something was wrong with her hair. But no — they had simply recognized her from YouTube and wanted a photo.

Lee is skeptical she can beat out some other videos that have triple the views.

"Some of them have 20 million views, way more than I do," she says.

One of the most devoted voters, says Lee, is her father, Jong Lee.

"She just did it for fun and surprisingly a lot of people saw her video," says Lee, a CPA.

While Grace's mother is a trained opera singer,she never pushed singing on her daughter. But her vocal talent shined anyway.

Lee had hundreds of thousands of views for other videos — covers of "When You Believe," the Mariah Carey-Whitney Houston collaboration from DreamWorks' "The Prince of Egypt," "Reflection" from "Mulan" — another Disney movie — as well as "You Raise Me Up," as performed by Josh Groban. Yet the millions of views for "Let it Go" came as a surprise to both Lee and her parents.

"They were more excited than I was," she says. They watched in awe as the 3-minute, 45-second clip racked up tens of thousands of views per day.

Before she made a single video, Lee found herself looking up YouTube covers of her favorite songs.

"I used to be the girl behind the computer watching everyone else's YouTube videos," Lee says.

Deciding to try it herself, she researched — on YouTube, of course — the equipment she'd need to film a video. Lee's first YouTube cover song was the upbeat "Forget You," by Cee Lo Green. Since then, she's fielded requests from fans of her Facebook page. Besides covers, her YouTube channel, youtube.com/gracefulleee, includes a sprinkling of public performances over the years, like when she sang the national anthem for her high school's homecoming football game in 2008.

While she doesn't quite know what life holds for her post-graduation, Lee is certain of one thing: "I'm pretty set on doing music."

She doesn't know what form that passion will take — perhaps Broadway auditions. Until then, Lee will minister to her digital audience by uploading more performances from her dorm room microphone.

"For now," she says, "I think I'm just going to do more videos."

RELATED COVERAGE

• 2014 Oscars: 'Let It Go' wins best original song

• Viral Video: Idina Menzel's 'Let it Go' on 'The Tonight Show'

• Oscars 2014: Disney's 'Frozen' a solid win for best animated feature

• 'Frozen' review: Disney's latest princess rules

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