A total of 39,506 people applied for a spot in Harvard University's undergraduate class of 2021, and just 2,037 were accepted — that's an acceptance rate of roughly 5.2 percent. Zero students were accepted off the waitlist. Now, imagine earning one of those coveted spots after spending your early years moving between homeless shelters, a hospital bed and motel rooms. That's what Richard Jenkins was doing when, in grade school, he became so committed to academics that he went on to become the valedictorian of his high school and earn a spot at Harvard. In an interview with Philadelphia public radio station WHYY, Jenkins recalls being ashamed of his upbringing. "In the sixth grade, one time I was walking from school with my friend, and he was asking me where I lived," he recalled. "The shelter looked like a big house — it could have been a mansion. So I told him, 'Yeah, that's my house right there,' because I was so embarrassed to say I lived in a shelter."

The moment inspired him to focus on school, despite bullies who nicknamed him "Harvard." "That's when I realized I've got to buckle in, because I can't have my potential kids going through what I'm going through now," he explained. Indeed, Jenkins did buckle in. In middle school, he attended a non-profit after-school program called Mighty Writers that helps students with their writing skills. With the program's support, Jenkins began the competitive application process to attend a selective high school, marking a difficult time in the young man's life. "My migraines started in the eighth grade because of all of the stress I was dealing with at the time. There was a lot of pressure to get into high school and succeed. And then my dad had a heart attack," he recalls for WHYY. Jenkins' condition worsened and he ended up spending significant time in the hospital, sometimes for weeks at a time. "I was eventually able to fight through it and get my work done because, at the end of the day, that was what was the most important to me," he says. That work paid off, and he was accepted at Girard College, a full-scholarship boarding high school for students from single-parent families with limited financial resources.

Richard Jenkins at Mighty Writers in Philadelphia