article by Sam Gardner via foxsports.com
Caylin Moore sat in the rare books room at the Los Angeles Public Library on Saturday evening, his heart beating out of his chiseled chest, awaiting the news that could change his life forever.
Earlier that afternoon, Moore, a senior safety on the Texas Christian University football team, had interviewed for a Rhodes Scholarship, one of the world’s most prestigious academic honors. He was one of 14 finalists competing for two awards in District 16, which covers Southern California, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. The winners — and 30 more honorees from the country’s 15 other districts — would go on to study for two years at Oxford University in England.
And while Moore, a 2011 Children’s Defense Fund Beat the Odds honoree, 2014 Fulbright Summer Institute Scholarship awardee and recent Rangel Scholarship recipient, felt optimistic about his chances, the rest of the room felt at least as good about theirs.“While everyone else is talking and bragging about what they had done, I just sat there quietly,” Moore told FOX Sports this week, recalling the tense three-hour wait between the end of his grueling interview and the announcement of the winners.
“And when they’d ask questions to compare themselves to me, I would just kind of keep it short because I didn’t feel it necessary to do that.“I think half the people that were there, they kind of slept on me,” Moore continued. “They didn’t see me as a threat. They probably just thought I was there for charity.”
If such misguided suspicions did exist among the other finalists, one could understand why.
A child of poverty, Moore is the second of three children, raised in a single-parent home in a gang-ridden neighborhood of Carson, California, and for parts of his life he shared a bed with his mother, Calynn, his big sister, Mi-Calynn, and his younger brother, Chase. His father, Louis Moore, was abusive, Moore’s mother says, both before and after she left him in 2000, when Caylin was 6.
Nine years later, Moore’s dad was arrested for the murder of his then-girlfriend, and in 2012, he was convicted and sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. But there’s far more to Moore’s story than simply using football to escape his own rough neighborhood and hard-luck circumstances. An economics major pursuing minors in mathematics and sociology, Moore carries a 3.9 grade point average and is on track to graduate in May.
While at Marist College, where he played quarterback for three seasons, Moore worked as a janitor. After transferring to TCU, Moore founded an outreach program called S.P.A.R.K. (Strong Players Are Reaching Kids), in which Moore and his Horned Frogs teammates visit elementary schools in disadvantaged Fort Worth neighborhoods, stressing the importance of education.
To read full article, go to: The remarkable journey of TCU’s Caylin Moore from poverty to Rhodes Scholar | FOX Sports
Posts tagged as “Texas Christian University”
In this day and age, 11-year olds don’t usually go to college. But it’s those who break the rules that get the most recognition.
Carson Huey-You is amazing and brilliant. The young prodigy was accepted to Texas Christian University at the age of 10, where he chose to study the difficult field of Quantum Physics. In case you’ve never heard of Quantum Physics, it is defined as: The study of the behavior of matter and energy at the molecular, atomic, nuclear, and even smaller microscopic levels.
The young student speaks Mandarin Chinese fluently, and got 1770 on his SAT. He is also a very good piano player, among other things. He was so young that he wasn’t able to actually apply to the school online. It turns out that the software would not allow applicants to state that they were born in the year 2002.
The child is expected to be a college graduate by the age of 16, which would make him a year younger than the youngest graduate the school has ever had. ‘‘I’m taking calculus, physics, history and religion. Those are my four classes,’ Huey-You told CBS DFW.
This is not the first time that young Carson showed such promise. He was reading by the age of 1 and doing pre-algebra by the age of 5, according to his parents.
“He’s definitely very talented and also he’s very serious about his work and he really enjoys it. And that’s the best that a professor can hope for his students, right?’ Associate math professor Qao Zhang said to CBS DFW.
Carson says that his first week of college was “overwhelming, but exciting and fun.”
In the spirit of family learning and growth, Carson’s mother expects to join him on campus to get education of her own. Claretta Huey-You says that she herself is planning on going back to school to study nursing. Additionally, his brother is expected to finish high school by the age of 13.
To read more, go to: risingafrica.org
The first weeks of college are a nerve-wracking time for nearly all students, but imagine trying to find your way around campus and meeting all your professors at age 11. Carson Huey-You is the youngest person to ever attend Texas Christian University.
He was reading chapter books by the time he was 2 years old. He was in high school at age 5, and he graduated from Accommodated Learning Academy in Grapevine with a 4.0 grade point average and a 1770 SAT score.
Huey-You’s feet barely touched the ground when he played Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” during his admissions interview. Dean of Admissions Ray Brown said he knew he wanted Huey-You to be a Horned Frog, but it wasn’t easy. “He was completely off the grid when it came to even the most basic of things, like completing an application or completing a financial aid form,” he said. “Because of his date of birth, those forms would not accept his application.”
As a TCU student, he will spend a lot of his time in the technology building, as he studies to become a quantum physicist. Huey-You’s mother is by his side every day as he attends calculus, physics, history and religion classes on the Fort Worth campus. “It’s just really fun to have her around,” Huey-You said.
Despite the age difference, he chats with fellow students, as well. “I’ve actually managed to make a few friends here,” he said. In spite of intelligence far beyond his years, Huey-You is a normal kid. He likes playing video games. His favorite movie is “Star Wars,” and he loves the “Chronicles of Narnia” book series. He also said he sometimes gets in trouble for wrestling a little too hard with his brother.
Huey-You plans to earn a doctorate before he’s even 20. To see video of this story, click here.
article by Lindsay Wilcox via nbcdfw.com