It appears that folks have gotten their underwear in a bunch because teenage prodigy Ralph Jones Jr. had the audacity to chose to go to an HBCU instead of Harvard and other elite institutions that accepted him.
Jones, 16, is a scholastic genius by all accounts. He entered first grade when he was just 4 years old and entered high school at age 12. So he was shocked when his decision to go to Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Fla., was met with an avalanche of hate and bickering around the country. People began to question his intelligence when he chose FAMU over the 45 institutions, including Harvard, Stanford, Cornell and Georgia Tech.
“Some of the stuff people were saying was like, ‘For someone so smart, he’s so dumb.’ I’ve gotten some really strange things,” Jones told theroot.com. “I think that this only pushes me to work a little harder, and to show people that this was my decision and I stand behind it, and I’m not going to back down from it. It’s been … wow. [Last] week [was] interesting.”
Jones tried to impart to people that there is a method behind his madness. Besides, when it comes to engineering, Harvard is no FAMU, which has long been admired for its engineering program.
“I’ve said over and over again that I’m a major in pre-engineering. And while a lot of people get upset that I didn’t attend an Ivy League institution, what they don’t realize is that [at] most Ivy League institutions — while I respect them for their liberal arts programs, their law programs, their prestige, the great contributions they’ve made to society, etc. — their colleges of engineering are really just in name as far as prestige is concerned. For example, Harvard’s [school] of engineering is still fairly new, while the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering is, I’d say, one of the best, if not the best, in the state,” Jones said.
Jones clarifies that FAMU was his fourth college choice. The Georgia Institute of Technology was his first. But Georgia Tech did not offer a full ride and Jones’ family was looking to get their son into an elite program for free.
Many of his top choices were either too far away or did not offer him a full ride. Harvard and Stanford offered to offset some of the cost of education but not all of it. Cornell and Kettering offered full scholarships but they were much too far for Jones‘ and his family‘s liking.
And there is one last, very important intangible, that Jones said sealed the deal for him to attend the prestigious HBCU. He felt at home; he felt he belonged.
“I believe Florida A&M is unlike any other college in the world just because of the HBCU experience here: the step shows, the band, the night life. It’s all unique,” Jones continued. “When it comes down to it, the family feeling — I didn’t feel that at other institutions, because I visited a lot of schools. And this is the only one [where] I felt like I was part of something larger.”
–terry shropshire
