Being A Black Student at A Big 10 University

(updated in August 2021 from the original Summer 2020 essay)

My senior year of high school, I applied to several big Midwestern universities, as well as one Hail Mary school, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Among the schools I applied to were Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan State.

My parents are from North Carolina, and I thought it might be a great experience being a Tar Heel, but Chapel Hill is notoriously difficult to get into if you are an out-of-state student, and I didn’t do well on the SAT.

The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana offered the President’s Award Program where minorities are eligible for scholarships that are awarded to “high-achieving freshmen from a variety of underrepresented groups,” which includes African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. U of I sent me a letter said that I had been admitted to the program, so it was a no-brainer that I would attend school at the Urbana- Champaign campus.

U of I was a big eye-opener and learning experience for me since I grew up squeaky clean, and lily-white Glen Ellyn, Illinois (an experience I talked about in my previous Medium essay.)

It was just so much more diverse. When I think back, I feel a little silly and naive on how shocked I was in the diversity. I attended the band Nine Inch Nails on their Downward Spiral Tour that fall I got to college and I found myself gawking at eyebrow piercings and people with blue or pink hair, which…