RichmondCC Graduate Is Yale University Trail Blazer

July 1, 2026 - Richmond Community College graduate Andrew He had a tough decision to make. Which Ivy League university did he want to attend in the fall?

The 18-year-old from Hamlet applied to six of the eight elite universities that make up the Ivy League. Andrew was accepted by all of them except Harvard, and he was put on a wait list at Columbia. He also applied to NC State University, UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University; he got accepted by all three.

“It came down to either Yale or Princeton once all the decisions came back,” Andrew said.

Andrew chose Yale University.

“Money was a huge factor and how Yale really focuses on its undergraduates. From what I read online, a majority of the students seemed happier at Yale, and that’s what I want,” Andrew said. “You only get to experience college once.”

At Yale, he will be majoring in Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology, with the career goal of becoming an anesthesiologist.

Andrew graduated from RichmondCC in May with an Associate in Science. He was a student in the Richmond Early College High School (REaCH) program. He is the first RichmondCC graduate to attend Yale University, as far as the current RichmondCC staff can determine.

While at RichmondCC, he was accepted into the RichmondCC Ambassador scholarship program. A self-described introvert, Andrew said being an Ambassador was the highlight of his time at RichmondCC. It helped him improve his communication and leadership skills and gave him work experience that he could put on his resume and college applications.

“Everyone who is over the Ambassador program was nice and helpful. I also liked all the people I worked with because we were all basically in the same grade and all very goal driven,” Andrew said.

Andrew’s family owns and operates King Gourmet in Hamlet. He has an older brother, William, who was also in the REaCH program at RichmondCC before transferring to the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. His brother is currently studying computer engineering at Duke University.

Andrew said he is excited to begin this next chapter of his life, which will take him to New Haven, Conn. Becoming an anesthesiologist requires 12 to 14 years of higher education and training, so Andrew has many more future college decisions to make. Will he stay at Yale? Will he apply to Stanford’s Knight-Hennessy Scholars program? Will he go abroad to Oxford or Cambridge in the UK?

For this young man whose college education started at RichmondCC, the skies the limit.