Four Bright Lights of City Schools Will Shine at Yale in Fall

New Haven -- Four outstanding high school students from New Haven will enter Yale next fall as "Sterling Scholars in the Class of 2003."

New Haven – Four outstanding high school students from New Haven will enter Yale next fall as “Sterling Scholars in the Class of 2003.”

The Sterling Scholars program was initiated in 1923 by the Yale Corporation from a bequest by Yale alumnus John W. Sterling (BA 1864). Each year, Yale-bound students from the New Haven community are given Sterling scholarships in recognition of their “scholastic merit, general promise, personality, and high character.”

The students are Crystal Gayle Astrachan and David Koch from Hill Regional Career High School and Timothy Gambell and Jing Wang from Wilbur Cross High School.

Astrachan took all of her courses during the spring semester at the University of New Haven, having earlier studied mathematics at Yale. She works 15 hours a week in a city drug abuse prevention program for children and another 15 hours a week at a local supermarket. As a participant in New Haven’s Sister City Program, she has traveled to Leon, Nicaragua, and this summer will travel to Mexico on a scholarship.

Gambell, who shows outstanding promise as a writer, was in the writing program of ECA and co-edited the Wilbur Cross Yearbook. He served for two years as a senior apprentice at the Eli Whitney Museum.

Koch is Valedictorian of his class at Career High School, where he served on the Principal’s Advisory Board. He worked at the Yale Animal Research Center, and throughout high school has held a 20-hour a week job.

Wang arrived in this country from his native China only four years ago. Since that time, he has mastered English and cites reading as one of his passions. Having already taken astronomy and economics courses at Yale, he will pursue his dream of becoming a writer.

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Media Contact

Dorie Baker: dorie.baker@yale.edu, 203-432-1345