Excelsior Charter School valedictorian Eunice Chae is Ivy League-bound

“A California condor takes flight, its wings casting faint shadows on the swaths of land beneath,” writes Eunice Chae, 18, in her poem, A Noteworthy Horizon.

It’s easy to draw parallels between the poet laureate and herself. Chae is a bright young woman who grew up in Victorville and is a nationally published author and journalist.

“I started reading when I turned 2 years old… I remembered reading the back of cereal boxes just to read. If you have a love of reading, most likely, you’ll have a love of writing… It’s amazing to me that with just words, you can create something totally new,” Chae said.

Chae graduated from Excelsior Education Center in Victorville and received 23 acceptance letters from the most prestigious universities in the world. The schools included Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, Rice, Vanderbilt and UCLA, to name a few.

Chase has also been awarded the Gates Foundation Scholarship that will fully fund her attendance to Harvard University this fall. As you read this now, she has already settled into her dorm room and started a Harvard Wilderness Trip with some of her peers.

Chae’s hunger for knowledge, being involved, and making a difference in the world around her has enabled her to receive several regional and national awards, including the Ronald Reagan Leadership Medal, Questbridge National College Match Finalist, and acceptance into the Princeton Summer Journalism Program.

Chae also conducted political science research on a full scholarship with the Pioneer Research Program and received the California State Seal of Civic Engagement.

She is a 2021 Nevada/California Phi Theta Kappa Poet Laureate and has also won multiple other Phi Theta Kappa writing competitions for her long-form journalism and political research.

While attending high school, Chae also completed two associate's degrees and a Pathways to Law certificate from Victor Valley College. One associate degree was in English, the other was in Political Science.

Her plan at Harvard is to study history and literature but have a concentration in government with a secondary in computer science. When asked where she sees herself in 10 years, she said she plans to go to law school and to pursue a career in law as a Federal Judge.

Chae admitted that it was very difficult to pick between Georgetown, Yale, and Harvard because they were her top three choices when applying, and she had successfully been accepted into all of them. How would she choose which one to pick?

She knew that no matter what this meant that all the work she had put into academics and being involved had paid off. She admits she’s had to juggle a ridiculously busy schedule with many sleepless nights. Considering her hunger and passion for knowledge, she decided to pick Harvard over other prestigious Universities because of all of the wonderful opportunities and facilities that Harvard has to offer.

Chae said she liked the idea that Harvard was close to Boston, that she could take classes at other campuses like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and  a fencing club that has never been available to her before.

Chae's parents, teachers, professors, and her love of the comedians —The Three Stooges— have all been her support system through this incredibly hectic last few years. She admits that it is sad to leave them all behind. Thankfully, of course, her love of The Three Stooges can be enjoyed digitally on YouTube while she’s in Cambridge.

Not everyone in her life has wanted to help her achieve her dreams, but the people and teachers who have helped her have meant the world to her.

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When she was in ninth grade, she had a mock trial teacher, Mr. George, who was a huge inspiration to her. He helped to both challenge her and keep her hungry for law and government.

At the end of her ninth-grade year, George left Excelsior for another position, so the school decided to get rid of the Mock Trial club and this pushed her into action, she said.

She wrote a long letter to the principal stating how important Mock Trial was to the campus. She also had 66 students sign a petition to keep the club. Afterward, the school tried its best to keep Mock Trial, but they couldn’t find another teacher who wanted to tackle such a time-consuming club.

Since she could no longer be in the Mock Trial, she decided to join the Model United Nations at Victor Valley College. She wasn’t as passionate about it as she was in Mock Trial because COVID kept her and her team from getting out to important events that former Model UN members have had the honor to go to, but it helped satisfy her need to make intelligent academic and political arguments.

Reporter Rene Ray De La Cruz contributed to this story.

This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Victorville graduate accepted to Harvard, Yale, UCLA, Vanderbilt