Owensboro High School’s Kelton Moorman applied to 35 colleges and universities. He was accepted into 31 and he waitlisted by two. And they are among the most selective colleges in the country: Harvard College, Brown University, Dartmouth College, and Williams College, along with other high-profile schools — including his ultimate choice of New York University.
May 1 symbolizes the confirmation date for many colleges across the nation, and Moorman officially decided he would be attending New York University in the fall to pursue a degree in teaching.
He said the acceptance was a culmination of years of hard work to maintain a 4.5 GPA and earn a 32 on the ACT. But the application process was draining for him.
He wrote upward of 15 different essays for the applications, and luckily through a program he was able to apply to 20 schools for $20.
His first acceptance letter came via email from Bates College. Bates had a 14% acceptance rate for the last school year, and after applying Moorman believed he wouldn’t get in.
“I woke up, checked my email and it was there and [the email] said, ‘Congratulations,’ and I screamed, woke the whole house, started crying my eyes out,” Moorman recounted. “I could barely form any coherent sentences and finally got a few minutes to calm down and [my mom] looked at the email and we both started crying together and it was just a big moment for me.”
The thought that he wasn’t going to get in was a common one as he submitted applications to a majority of the schools, but once he got the acceptance message from Bates College he grew less doubtful of his abilities.
When Moorman received his acceptance to his dream school NYU, he was in class at OHS. After a celebratory outburst, his teacher asked him to read the email to the class.
“The whole class started clapping and I started crying a little bit because it’s been my dream school for so long,” he said.
He said if he could go back and give himself advice during the application process, he would have had more faith and taken a shot at more Ivy League schools.
Moorman said that feeling of relief and making a dream come true comes partially from his experience at school.
He said at times, he was compared to other first-generation students and families, and that his hard work wasn’t as appreciated as much. Now on the other side, he said it may be cliche, but “It all does pay off in the end.”
Through this experience, Moorman hopes to be an inspiration to other low-income and first-generation college students to aim as high as they want to — and to help change the narrative around people who are from Mechanicsville.
“I want to show that people that come from this area of town, which is known for having a lot of drugs and gang violence, that you can get out of it,” he said. “It’s very hard but you can break that cycle of living in this area.”
