What it is like for a black student to go to Cambridge

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Campus Life, Media Archive, United Kingdom on 2018-06-22 16:55Z by Steven

What it is like for a black student to go to Cambridge

The Financial Times
2018-05-30

Rianna Croxford


Rianna Croxford

Trailblazer discovers confidence sought by top universities can be learned

I am the first in my family to go to university and faced a lot of the obstacles students of colour encounter when aiming for Oxford and Cambridge.

Educated at state school, I graduated from Cambridge last year as one of only seven women of mixed white and black heritage in my year of 3,371 undergraduates.

As one of the first black students to read English at Trinity Hall college, I had to deal with different degrees of racism day to day, as well as cultural challenges that my background had not prepared me for.

I want to help make it easier for other students like myself to enter elite institutions that can offer a fast track to a successful career…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , ,

What It’s Like Being an “Other”

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Autobiography, Campus Life, Media Archive, United States on 2018-06-22 16:40Z by Steven

What It’s Like Being an “Other”

College Magazine
2018-06-19

Mailinh McNicholas


Mailinh McNicholas

I’ve remained on the fringes of two different and separate Anchorage, Alaska communities. I have a Caucasian father and Vietnamese mother. My high school friends often talked about my ethnicity and attempted to place me into a defined racial category. Some of my peers pegged me as an Asian immigrant, some have asked if I am Native Alaskan, and others simply asked ‘What are you?’

Unfortunately, my hopes did not match my reality. A few months into my freshman year at GW [George Washington University] I found that my college peers also cast me as “the other.” Although I’m equal parts Asian and White, to my white friends I’m Asian and to my Asian friends, I’m white. My bi-cultural heritage once again left me excluded from being included in ether community…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , ,