Christina Adja, a South Bronx native who just graduated from Central Park East High School in East Harlem, is heading to Harvard this fall — after also being accepted to Yale, UPenn, Georgetown University and Smith College. She was the first student in her school to ever be accepted to multiple Ivy League schools.
“As much as I’m kinda sad that I’ll be leaving New York City soon, it’s really something that’s great for me, you know,” Adja told the Bronx Times in a June 26 interview.
Harvard has many legacy students, meaning one or both of their parents attended the school, but Adja did not have that advantage. Her parents are Togolese immigrants and her mom, who got an associate’s degree back home, works as a clerk at Montefiore and her dad, who did not attend college, drives horse-drawn carriages, mainly in Central Park.
Fortunately, Adja said she had a great college counselor at school who kept all students aware of various opportunities that would help them. Even so, she said she worried about her chances of getting into a prestigious school. She hadn’t been accepted into the city’s specialized high schools and wasn’t awarded some of the biggest-name scholarships, so she thought perhaps the Ivys were a stretch.
But Adja leaned on her strong academic record, including four Advanced Placement courses this year, and a broad range of extracurricular experience, including recording a podcast for WNYC’s Radio Rookies program, a two-week trip to Botswana with the organization Black Birthright and leading peer-to-peer college application tutoring at school. Adja also participated in afterschool and teen programming with WHEDCo all throughout elementary and high school.
Still, when applying for colleges, Adja wasn’t certain whether she could beat the competition — and even if she did, how her family could afford it. She applied to 21 total schools, including CUNY and SUNY, and when acceptance letters came in from five prestigious but expensive schools, she was immediately nervous about how to pay.
Her parents reassured her they’d figure out the money no matter what, but they might not have fully grasped how much tuition really is, Adja said. At Harvard, full tuition for the 2025-26 academic year is nearly $87,000, and at Yale, over $90,000.
When it came to finalizing a decision and figuring out financial aid, Adja was determined to make her own independent decisions.
“I wanted to handle the financial side on my own, so I didn’t burden my parents so much,” she said.
Fortunately, Harvard came through with a generous aid package that the other schools didn’t match. Seeing that, “I committed [to Harvard] randomly, in the middle of AP Calculus,” she said.
As a South Bronx kid, moving to Cambridge, Mass. may be a bit of culture shock, said Adja. During her one visit to campus, she found the town to be “old,” “comfortable” and oddly quiet with no music blaring. “It didn’t seem as quote-unquote dangerous as the South Bronx,” she said.
Campus life was very artsy and politically active, according to Adja. She saw pro-Palestine protestors pressuring the school to continue opposing the Trump administration’s cuts to higher education. There was also a debate between Democratic and Republican students and a live band performance.
“It was a weird, foreign environment, most definitely,” Adja said.
But now, she’ll head from Highbridge to Harvard with confidence in her achievements and plans to attend law school afterwards. As her parents spend the summer bragging to coworkers and strangers about their Ivy-bound daughter, Adja said she’s both nervous and excited for her future.
“I’ve accomplished a lot within New York City,” she said. “I’m ready to see what I’ll accomplish outside of New York City, in a completely different environment.”
Reach Emily Swanson at eswanson@schnepsmedia.com or (646) 717-0015. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes
