Abigail Alemayeho (‘22), popularly known as Abby, is one of the Preuss School UC San Diego’s most accomplished seniors. Her achievements and involvement throughout the years have ultimately helped her reach her goal; Abby will be attending Stanford University on a full ride scholarship!

Question: What drove you to always strive for academic excellence in your classes?
Answer: My mom is very big on education; I remember she would always give me books to read. Once you get used to something, it becomes a habit. It became a habit for me to compete with myself because I’ve always wanted to go the extra mile in my classes.

Question: Why did you choose Stanford? Follow up, why did you choose to apply for early decision?
Answer: I matched with Stanford through QuestBridge and I had to rank the colleges I wanted to go to, so for the sake of ranking them I put Stanford first. [If you apply for the National College Match, the school you rank first will automatically accept you as a scholar that applied for early decision. As defined by collegeboard.org, early decision plans are binding; a student who is accepted as an early decision applicant must attend the college.] My top three choices were Stanford, Yale, and Brown.

Question: What makes you a well-rounded student?
Answer: I try to do as much as I can and think for my community as well as myself. I feel like my personality attracts people as well.

Question: Did you have a support system to help you reach your goals?
Answers: Mom, sierra mentor, ms. garcia, bandy, weber. Their perspective helped a bunch.

Question: Has anybody ever made you feel as if you would never be able to reach your goal?
Answer: I remember whenever I was talking about schools I wanted to go to, I felt like everybody was like you want to go to Stanford? Or Stanford is a really hard college to get into. The doubt was obvious and hearing that for so long made me doubt myself.

Question: What is your favorite memory?
Answer: Recently, when I opened my decision letter I was very stressed. In my head, I prepared myself to not get accepted. I video taped my reaction, nobody will ever see it by the way. My mom and I were in the Starbucks parking lot, and I screamed. I saw that I got accepted, but it was so sudden I didn’t even see which college I got into. After I saw that Stanford had accepted me I screamed again.

Question: Do you have any advice for the youth of Preuss?
Answer: You should be your own cheerleader. I kept telling myself that I had to go the extra mile. Extra credit is on my list of things to do. Not things I can do. Planning out what you want is helpful because it will help you figure out how to get there.

Question: Is there anything else you would like to add?
Answer: Believe in yourself.