Teen wins 4-year grant to Yale
The scholarship for Kahuku student Tiffany Polk will also cover room and board
Kahuku High & Intermediate School senior Tiffany Polk appears well on the way to fulfilling her dreams of becoming a neurosurgeon thanks to a four-year scholarship to Yale University.
"It's the most amazing feeling like you could ever have," said the 17-year-old Hauula girl. "Just knowing that your life has changed forever is just beautiful."
Polk, daughter of Jesse Polk and Rachel Dunkley, has attended Kahuku since the second half of her sophomore year.
Polk moved to Hauula from the small town of Irmo, S.C., in January 2006 at age 15, with her mother; brother, 15; sister, 8; and grandmother Linda Haville.
"My mom has always had to work a lot to help support us, being a single mom, and she always has had to take care of my grandmother," Polk said.
She said her mother has encouraged her by telling her, "If you want to do it, you can go ahead and try."
The National College Match, an admissions program involving 20 top American colleges, awarded the four-year scholarship worth more than $160,000, which will cover tuition, room and board.
Yale will pay for the scholarship.
Polk was selected from 3,800 students nationwide by QuestBridge, a Palo Alto, Calif., foundation that administers the National College Match.
"Tiffany embodied the ideals of a College Match student," said Tim Brady, QuestBridge's CEO. "She's passionate. She's public-service minded. She will do great things at Yale University."
Polk plans to pursue medicine and the sciences at Yale, and is interested particularly in neurology and infectious diseases and immunology.
"I've always wanted to have a career in medicine and help people, basically," she said.
She recalls watching surgery shows on TV at age 5. At 6, for Dress for Success Day at school, she wore scrubs.
"I wanted to be a neurosurgeon."
From Chapin High School, in Irmo outside Columbia, to Kahuku was definitely a change, she said. She felt out of place at first, thinking her fellow Kahuku students were mostly surfers who wanted to go to the beach all day.
But she discovered there were "tons of kids that wanted to do just as much as I do," she said.
She attended advanced-placement classes and joined the speech and debate team, the show choir, swim team and the National Honor Society.
"I love it," she said. "It grows on you."
Polk works two jobs -- at Subway and the International House of Pancakes -- to pay for her extracurricular activities.
She said the teachers at Kahuku are great and have been helpful and supportive.
Polk will be on her way to Yale, in New Haven, Conn., in April for Bulldog Day to tour the campus with other incoming freshmen.
