HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR GETS SCHOLARSHIPS FROM 5 IVY LEAGUE INSTITUTIONS Published On March 31, 2014 | By Staff | Dr Boyce, financial commentary, Financial News, investing, investing in education, News by Dr. Boyce Watkins Avery Coffey is so accomplished that he’s getting attention from media outlets like Fox News. Coffey is a student at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington, DC. The young man is getting all of this well-deserved attention because he was accepted into five Ivy League institutions: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown. Four out of the five schools that have accepted Coffey have already offered him scholarship money and financial aid. He wants to major in Finance (I must say that’s a pretty good choice…I had the same major). He says that he one day wants to become the CEO of an investment consulting firm. “I guess probably the CEO of an investment (or management consulting) firm. I guess pretty much overseeing acquisitions or transactions between large companies. Hopefully, Fortune 500 companies,” Coffey told Fox News. Coffey wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was raised in a single parent household in Ward 8, a tough part of Washington DC. He has this good advice for young people: “You can go anywhere you want to, pursue any career that you want to, and you shouldn’t let anybody hinder you from trying to reach your goals,” he said. Financial Juneteenth lessons from this story: 1) Your children are the most important long-term investment you’ll ever make. Parenting is not always meant to be a feel-good activity. Instead, it is built upon making a series of day-to-day sacrifices that pay off in the long-term for a person you care about. Great black men aren’t born…they are usually BUILT by great parents. 2) This young man was fortunate enough to get media attention for his accomplishments, but make no mistake about it: There are thousands of other young men just like him. Sometimes, the media can treat educated black men like they’re pink unicorns, completely defying popular black male culture. But anyone who has ever spent time at institutions like the BMW academy in Lexington, Ky are well-aware that there are great black men everywhere achieving at the highest levels. I would just love to see them get the attention they deserve. 3) This young man should be applauded for getting the opportunity to attend Ivy League universities, but we must be careful not to feed into white supremacy and elitism by somehow believing that Ivy League institutions are reflective of the highest levels of black educational achievement (I actually turned down Columbia University’s acceptance when I went to get my PhD in Finance). Spelman College, for example, is the best college in the nation for black women, including Harvard and Yale. They’ve earned this status because they give students something that they rarely receive at an Ivy league school: A very powerful sense of self in an environment that fully accepts their blackness and never treats it as if it’s a liability (to reflect on Harvard’s racism, for example, see the story about the way the school disrespected the work of Dr. Cornel West). Knowing who you are and being confident in the power of your blackness can be more important than the number of degrees on your wall. An educated black person isn’t worth much if they’re spiritually lost. 4) Remember the lessons of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, who was a great man largely due to the things he was taught by his parents. Not only did Martin’s parents keep a strict and consistent household regimen (no one was allowed to eat dinner until Martin Sr. got home from work), but they also taught their children to use their greatness for a higher purpose. So, while Martin could have easily been a highly educated and wealthy man, he chose to multiply his greatness by impacting the world. In order to fulfill his destiny, Martin need another gift from his parents: courage. So, this young man who went to college at the age of 15 was so spiritually energized by his family that he went on to use this genius to courageously confront the demon of American racism in a way that led to him being admired by billions of people long after he’d left the earth. That’s how education truly breeds greatness. It goes far deeper than being able to simply master a capitalist system and buy yourself a nice car.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 20:21:49 +0000
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