At 18 years old, Bryan Diaz-Ximello is not only the first in his family to graduate from college, but also did so before finishing high school on Long Island, New York.
The Hispanic teenager is a senior at Longwood High School and at the same time earned 93 credits at Suffolk Community College. With that, he now has his associate’s degree in psychology even days before graduating from high school, he noted. Fox News.
He is one of the few students in New York to achieve that feat. “When I walked across the stage at graduation (at Community College), it was truly an indescribable feeling,” he said. He now plans to go to SUNY Oswego in the fall to earn a degree in Technology Education. He hopes to finish that university in two years and then start teaching.
“It’s a great sense of accomplishment to know that my name is part of those select few,” he continued. Bryan started taking college courses as part of a program offered to select students at Longwood High School, went ahead and found a way to handle double the class load.
“We can all point to a teacher or coach and say, ‘I wouldn’t be who I am unless that person influenced me in some way.’ And I really want to be that for the students,” he commented.
“In every university system to have earned an associate’s degree even before graduating high school… It’s really amazing,” he added. Díaz-Ximello earned his associate’s degree while maintaining a 3.7 GPA, he said. Pix11.
- The Excelsior Scholarship program for low-income students is open