Yay! Another Nigerian making us proud back home. In the words of Necolebitchie, they say never judge a book by it’s cover!
For many people, if they were come across 17-year-old, 6’1″ Akintunde Ahmad with his long dreads and ‘Black Student Union’ t-shirt walking the streets of Oakland, Calif., they’d stereotype him as some thug with no future. However, ‘Tunde, as his friends and family call him, is a baseball player who boast a 2100 (out of 2400) SAT score, a 5.0 GPA from Oak Tech High School, and has been accepted to numerous top tier schools including; Yale, Brown, Columbia, Northwestern, USC, UCLA, Howard, Chapman, Cal Poly and Cal State East Bay.
As one of six kids of a Rasatafari family, ‘Tunde says he’s just like “any other street dude on 98th Avenue,” and that he achieved his accomplishments without private tutors or private schools. His mother, Zarina, and his father, Mubarak, says that they’ve done their best to raise their children with good morals in hopes that they’ll stay out of trouble.
During an ABC7 report, Tunde revealed how he’s stereotyped because of his appearance:
“People looking at me funny is so common that it doesn’t stick out for me anymore. It’s something that I’ve gotten used to.”
“I’ll leave this school and there will be teachers who never knew I was one of the people on the honor roll.”
Of course there are the critics who suggest that his classes were easier because he was at a public high school which has a lower bar for achievement but his SAT, AP, and GPA all speak for themselves, and he’s been on the honor roll every single semester.
He says:
“I’ve never tried to cross any boundaries or anything like that. I’m just good at following directions, and no good ever comes from challenging a Parental Unit.”
Akintunde is considering either Yale or Brown and plans to major in Pre-med or Pre-law.
Congrats to him
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