Bringing college into focus Update: Since we published this story, Josh’s star has kept rising. Read more here about his amazing experiences with Celestron, the world’s leading telescope makers!
“We’re sitting at the kitchen table—that’s my mom and that’s my sister with me,” says Josh (C/O 2021), describing a one-minute video he posted on Facebook in mid-December that now has thousands of views.
In the video, shot on a smartphone by Josh’s father, they’re gathered around a laptop and the excitement is palpable. They’re just a few seconds away from finding out whether or not Josh has been accepted to Cornell University to study electrical engineering.
The Ivy League wasn’t always in Josh’s sights, even though he’s a naturally curious student who excels in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM); gets good grades; and believes in the power of a college education. The trouble, he says, is that he didn’t believe a school like Cornell was accessible to him.
“I thought maybe I could apply to my state school and a few others in the area,” he says, “and I would take what I could get.”
But something changed in summer 2020 for the Wilmington, DE, student: he joined TeenSHARP. Josh heard about the program from a friend when they were virtually attending last year’s Forum to Advance Minorities in Engineering (FAME).
Once he joined TeenSHARP, Josh found himself making a list of potential colleges where he could apply for an early decision. “I thought, ‘what are some reach schools? Maybe I could have a dream school?” So he set out to add a few to his shortlist, including MIT, Caltech, and Stanford. Then he saw Cornell: No. 14 in the country for engineering.
“What stood out?” he says. “They’re innovative. They’re forward-thinking. They have a solid foundation, and they’re great in computer science, too.”
After virtual college tours and lots of research, Josh decided to apply Early Decision—a “supercharged” process that he completed before December. “That was a product of how much writing TeenSHARP wanted us to do,” he says. “I thought I would be applying into December and January.”
On the contrary, by mid-December, Josh was gathered with his family around the kitchen table, glued to the laptop screen and waiting to see what Cornell had to say about his application. For Josh—a shy student with a passion for science since childhood—college education has a practical, but powerful, meaning: he’ll learn as much as possible on a quest for knowledge, and he’ll gain the necessary skills for his future career.
“I was always someone who wanted to know, ‘How does this thing work? Why does it work that way? How can you get it to be faster, or more efficient?” Josh says.
His enduring interest in gadgets, devices, and machines began when Josh’s father would take him to the local airport to see his grandfather, who worked on airplanes. Once, Josh got to go inside a plane. Surrounded by the machine parts, screens, and controls, he felt a fateful spark of curiosity that hasn’t since faded.
In March 2020, just as COVID-19 shut the world down, Josh could be spotted on his back deck, taking for a spin the Celestron telescope his mother got him second-hand for his birthday. For fun, Josh taught himself to polar align the device—astonished to see, with sparkling clarity through the telescope eyepiece, every detail of the smokestack in the distance. His next challenge was to find Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky.
Josh got swift and adept at pulling distant objects into the sights and focus of his Celestron. “At first,” he wrote in his college essay, “this process took a good 10 minutes, but now, it’s second nature, only taking me about a minute to locate any object in the night sky that I desire.” By summer, Josh was taking astrophotography of the Flower Moon, Mars at opposition, and “the mysterious comet Neowise paying earth a rare visit.”
His most ambitious upcoming shot? The Andromeda Galaxy. It’s located 2.5 million light years away from Earth, “making it a difficult, but achievable goal I’ve set my sights on,” Josh wrote in his essay.
That left an impression on admissions officers at Cornell. So in mid-December, when Josh opened his decision from the school, beside his mom and his sister in that well-watched smartphone video, he found the best news he could imagine. He had been accepted to Cornell.
“After spending a rigorous four months with an organization called TeenSHARP, designed to place students in top universities and secure funding for their education, my son Joshua was accepted in his first choice, Cornell University (School of Engineering), where he will pursue a degree in Electrical-Computer Engineering!!!!!” Josh’s mother, Rita, wrote with evident pride on Facebook. “Cornell’s engineering department only has a 6.5 percent acceptance rate annually and Josh is a part of that!!!! We are soooo proud of him!!! Congratulations Josh!!!!”
As for Josh, he says he was so shocked, he could only muster, “Oh my god”—and it’s true.
Watch the video and you’ll see for yourself: Josh is stunned with excitement and seems at a loss for words. His mother and sister, however, don’t hesitate to make noise—and quickly, the cheering turns into an emotional embrace. Josh’s older sister, Camille, who has Down Syndrome and has always been a grade ahead of Josh in school, is overjoyed.
“We’re close, and this moment was really big to her, too,” Josh says.
Click here to watch Josh’s college decision reaction video.
