When Potential Meets Purpose

I am the child of a Salvadorean house cleaner and Peruvian carpenter who raised me in an apartment complex in Wheaton, Maryland. My earliest memory is entering kindergarten and only speaking Spanish. By second grade, I was an honor roll student and earned a special award for helping teachers as an interpreter, destined for a bright future. Fast-forward to my senior year of high school, however, and I'd been suspended over 20 times, arrested twice, and had a 1.3 GPA. As an only child, my peer group became more important to me than earning good grades. Unfortunately, the group I surrounded myself with was notorious with school security and local law enforcement. After hanging out with the wrong crowd for years, I graduated from high school and started to see less of them. I realized they limited my true potential.

After some teachers and counselors told me I would never attend college, I thought about my second-grade self. What would he think of himself a decade later? What a disappointment for his parents, who left everything behind to give him everything they never had. I visited my local community college and walked into the admissions office. After showing proof of a high school diploma, and taking a placement test for math and English, I was officially a college student. Based on my experience with the police, I selected criminal justice as a major in hopes of becoming a lawyer.

One of my final classes required us to visit a local jail. After touring the facility, a group of inmates agreed to speak with us. Surprisingly, two of them were my high school friends. It was a surreal moment. I was sitting on one side with a pen and paper, and they were on the other side in cuffs. From that moment on, I vowed to prioritize my education. I earned an associate's, bachelor's, and master's degree before finally earning my doctorate in education from Hopkins.

I've worked in admissions offices at Maryland, Hopkins, and Georgetown for 10 years, and I am now the CEO of Admissions Gambit, a company that provides high school students with educational coaching to prepare them for college admissions applications. Coming from my background, it's an amazing feeling to mentor youth and watch them earn acceptances to some of the most prestigious colleges in the U.S. Some may think I did a 180, but I think of it more as a 360. I was always that intellectually curious second grader, but the experiences I lived through during my adolescent years gave me purpose as an adult. They brought me full circle to my life's work, and I am grateful for them.

Erwin Hesse is the CEO of Admissions Gambit. He previously served as associate director of admissions for the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.