ISPS Director’s Fellow Ryan Liu Speaks at “Beating the Odds” Summit

June 18, 2018
Ryan Liu, former ISPS Director's Fellow, with Michelle Obama at Summit on "Beating the Odds"
 
Ryan Liu, Yale ‘18 and a former ISPS Director’s Fellow, participated on a panel last week focused on increasing higher education access. As part of “The Reach Higher Initiative,” the Summit on “Beating the Odds” brought together rising first-generation college students to provide them with advice and tools to succeed in college. 
 
Liu spoke on a panel with former First Lady Michelle Obama, and they both shared their experiences as first-generation college students and as minority students on an Ivy League Campus. Obama, Liu, and others on the panel urged first-generation students to use the resources and support systems that are available on campus, and Obama stressed the importance of finding a cohort and community to belong to. 
 
Liu said that in his class at Yale he was one of only three community college transfer students, and expressed how often students like him had ‘imposter syndrome.’  But he said, “I listened to a lot of Hamilton songs that first semester. First generation college students, like Hamilton, feel like they’re facing an endless uphill climb, that they have something to prove and are willing to work nonstop so they ‘don’t throw away their shot.’”
 
 
Area of study 
Education