In December 2017, Richard Onyejuruwa from the university admissions office hosted an information session about Cornell for prospective students in New York City. Although she was still in middle school, Vianny was all ears. She liked his description of the Dyson School—which he said has a small school vibe within the larger university.
Richard, Cornell’s senior assistant director of undergraduate admissions and diversity outreach, shared that he—like Vianny—grew up in the Bronx. She notes that her neighborhood was one where not many students aspired to attend college, and fewer still were admitted to an Ivy League institution.
Three years later, during college application season, she tuned in to another Cornell admissions session, once again hosted by Richard. After that session, she picked up her journal again.
“I made up my mind. I’m going to Cornell. I’m going to Dyson. I started writing it in my journal over and over,” Vianny says. “I was manifesting. It was COVID time, and one of the hobbies I picked up and got good at was manifesting.”
Fast forward seven years and Vianny has indeed manifested her Cornell dream. She’s now in her final semester at Cornell’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at the SC Johnson College of Business, on the threshold of starting her professional career.
The way out
Vianny’s parents came to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic. For most of her life, Vianny’s mother supported her two children by making and selling empanadas. Vianny recalls afternoons waiting for her mom to come home from work. She and her brother would entertain themselves by reading. She recalls bringing home stacks of books from the library and reading them all by the next day.
“We didn’t have cable, we didn’t have internet, but we had books from the library. That was my escape,” she says. “Growing up in a really tough environment, I realized early on that there’s only one way out—and that’s education.”
Vianny excelled in school. At the end of elementary school, she won a prestigious Teak Fellowship. The program helps talented students like Vianny gain access to some of the best high schools and universities in the country. The fellowship helped prepare Vianny to enter the Masters School, a highly selective boarding high school in Westchester County.
She entered the Masters School knowing no one, and she clearly recalls wanting to be seen and heard by her peers. “Some of my classmates, they would just talk over me like I wasn’t speaking,” she says. “And I was like, ‘Are you not hearing me?’”
Vianny quickly learned to speak up in class and assert herself.
“My grandmother didn’t go to school at all. Now she can say that her granddaughter has an education worth more than half-a-million dollars,” Vianny says. “I’m the type of person that wears this proudly.”
The bread in her arms
In the course of two decades, Vianny has changed her family’s story. She is the first person in her family born in the U.S. and the first to attend college. Her mother told Vianny she was “born with the bread under her arm.” Vianny explains that this means she has access to many opportunities, i.e., the “bread,” that others don’t have.
Vianny is proud of the hard work she has invested to succeed at Cornell. At the start of her Cornell career, she struggled with balancing school, work, and extracurriculars. But, she says, Cornell has taught her two critical life skills: grit and resilience.
“When I came to Cornell, I came as an 18-year-old girl who had ambitions and who had a bright light. I still have that light, and I still have that spirit,” she says. “But I was missing the grit. You know, when you have cement, it starts out as this soft, muddy thing. And then it hardens. For me, Cornell was the moment when the cement hardened. Now it has hardened to a point where it cannot be broken. It cannot be destroyed. It can only build.”
A smart older sister
Vianny is deeply committed to giving back to others—both through mentoring and through sharing her experiences.
In the fall of her junior year, she attended a meeting of a student group hosted by Richard Onyejuruwa, the same admissions staff person who sparked her interest in attending Cornell. The group was Cornell University Diversity Admissions Ambassadors (CUDAA).
Student ambassadors meet with prospective students and share more about the opportunities available to them at Cornell.
There were only about ten students in attendance at that first meeting. Vianny decided to change this and energize recruitment. Over the next three semesters, she quadrupled the number of ambassadors from ten to more than forty, and she served as vice president and then president of CUDAA.
She enjoys talking with prospective students who may never have imagined themselves at Cornell. “When I think of my own story,” Vianny says, “I think about how I can impact people who may relate to something in my life.”
Vianny recalls a recent conversation she had with a group of prospective students who asked her why she chose Cornell.
“Cornell has the power to free you, both academically and financially,” Vianny told them. “I think they really listened because they saw me. I could be their older sister. I could be their cousin. I feel like it hits home a little differently when you can see yourself in the person who’s preaching to you.”
A message for her future self
Vianny is immensely grateful for the financial support she has received from Cornell. When she celebrates her commencement in May, she will graduate debt-free. Vianny is the recipient of the John E. and Elaine Mead Alexander Scholarship, the Karangelen Family Scholarship, and the Robin and Doug Shore Scholarship, in addition to Cornell grant aid.
“Freeing is exactly the word I would choose to describe it,” she observes. “It’s freeing to be in a place where I can invest in myself.”
Vianny is taking her time to decide what her next steps will be after she graduates in May. She aspires to be a life coach, a writer, and to earn an MBA.
“I would love to help other people through writing, maybe through writing a book,” she acknowledges.
One thing she’s sure of is that she knows herself. Vianny says Cornell has helped her tune out the noise of what others are doing or worrying about, so she can focus on manifesting her own dreams.
Vianny cites a line from a Robert Frost poem she read as a young girl: “Nothing gold can stay.”
“The poem basically says this world is rough and nothing gold can stay,” Vianny explains. “But I want to stay golden—through all the different versions of myself I will become. I can change what I like. I can change my hair. I can change my taste in food, but I won’t change my spirit. I want to stay golden.”
