Teen, in and out of homelessness, gets accepted to 17 colleges: 'I can do it and I will do it'

Hope Schreiber
·Writer


A teenager from New Jersey has been accepted to 17 colleges and counting, but his road to success hasn’t been without its bumps.

Dylan Chidick, 17, moved to America from Trinidad when he was seven years old, and has been living with his mom and younger twin brothers, both of whom suffer from a serious heart condition. His family has been in and out of homelessness throughout his life, moving around to find shelter.

But now Chidick is looking at a bright future — specifically, 17 college acceptance letters.

“My family went through a lot and there has been a lot of people saying, ‘you can’t do that,’ or ‘you’re not going to achieve this,’ and me — getting these acceptances — kind of verifies what I have been saying. I can do it and I will do it,” Dylan told CBS2.

“The dream I want to achieve, I have to have a lot of determination,” he said, and such determination has certainly paid off. He’s already accomplished a lot during his high school career; he became the senior class president at Henry Snyder High School and was inducted into the honor society. Now, he is looking forward to becoming the first in his family to attend college.

He owes a lot of his success to his single mother, who wasn’t afraid to ask for help from the non-profit “Women Rising.” According to Dylan, witnessing her try to make a better life for herself and her family is what made him want to do better as well. “Making herself vulnerable and putting herself out there, that made me determined to never let us get back in that situation again,” Dylan said.

Women Rising has placed the family in permanent supportive housing, which has given Dylan a place to study, as well as a place to wait for his last acceptance letter. “The College of New Jersey. I haven’t heard back yet, but that is my top school right now,” he said. Wherever he goes, he plans to study political science.

Chidick did not immediately respond to Yahoo Lifestyle’s requests for comment.

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