Erika Johnson ’17 was “incredulous at first to be admitted to Dartmouth College, an Ivy League school with a 10 percent student acceptance rate and a list of alumni that includes Daniel Webster, Nelson Rockefeller and Dr. Seuss,” writes Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Jim Stingl.
Her incredulity was based, at least in part, on her early experience as a young girl living with her family in a homeless shelter, he writes.
“I come from a low-income family, so money has always been tight,” Johnson tells Stingl. “We fell on really hard financial times and we were eventually evicted and had to move into a shelter. We stayed there for about four months. I remember trying to hide it from other students.
“But from that I think something sparked. I knew this would not be for me forever.”
Stingl writes that Johnson “found good friends and supportive faculty at Dartmouth, and has changed her focus from premed to sociology after being inspired by a class that raised questions about society and gender.”
Read the full story, published 9/22/15 by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.