Born into a family of six siblings, I am the only one who has traveled outside the country, better still, for an educational purpose. I am the fifth of the six children born to Mr. and Mrs. Owusu. I have three brothers and two sisters, the last girl just started Yaa Asantewaa Girls' Secondary School in 2005. Growing up, I witnessed my three older brothers and one older sister struggle to stay in school because of the financial limitations of my family and hence my parents' inability to pay their tuition. That was the first message that I got; that I should count myself out of the highly educated category in the society. There was no way I could possibly afford to study beyond the Junior Secondary School (JSS) level. Despite this financial limitation, I was determined to follow the steps of the many people I read about as my source of encouragement, the breakthroughs that they made in their lives. I wanted to be one of those who will be considered role models to people belonging to the "unfortunate class" in our societies.
Coupled with this unfortunate financial limitation was the fact that my family lived (and still lives) in a village, in Ghana, that can never be located on the most detailed map of Ghana. The highest form of education that most of the growing generation received was at the JSS level. After that, their baskets and machetes were waiting for them to join their parents on the farm in the struggle for survival. It is the kind of village that normally, the governments of developing countries are not even aware it exists and hence their needs couldn't possibly be addressed by the government. Aside all the tuitions of my older siblings, my parents managed to enroll me in the local Primary school. I convinced myself that somehow, I was going to create for myself the perfect opportunity that will turn my life around, that of my family and all those who knew me.
One of my brothers even rekindled this dream of mine when he got a scholarship into the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana after performing excellently on his final exams. He set the pace as the first person in my family, and my village, to attend university. Four years in the primary school and my teachers were encouraging my parents to take me to a private school because I had the innate potential to reach great heights. I worked so hard that all my teachers saw a new brighter future inherent in me ready to explode. So my parents obliged and enrolled me into Oxford International School in Konongo. At the age of eight, I was spending more time on the farm with my parents than the average child my age hoping that, with a better harvest, my parents could sell the extra yield and use the income generated to defray my private school education costs.
In my final year, I chose the high schools that I wanted to attend after my final examination and of course, Prempeh College was my first choice. My parents had a hard time agreeing with my choosing Prempeh College because it was the best Secondary school in the country and hence quite out of reach for my parents to afford. Fortunately, I did so well in my national examination that I qualified for a scholarship from the Ghana Cocoa Marketing Board.
I got accepted into Prempeh College, my alma mater and I registered my name as one of the fortunate people to attend the school that served as the home for President John Agyekum Kuffour and other great and renowned graduates of the college. Prempeh College was another place that presented me with another challenge of my life; a chance to test my strength against other clever students from all parts of the country. The only difference was that most of these students came from rich families, some of whom were kids of ministers and so on. I was able to prove myself there too and won a nomination from my headmaster to represent the school against top three students from all the other highly ranked secondary schools in a competition for a scholarship by the United World Colleges. At the end of the rigorous application process and various academic testing, I was one of the four students chosen to represent Ghana in any one of the ten United World Colleges (UWC) around the world. I ended up in the USA; the United World College called the Armand Hammer United World College. The UWC is made up of ten schools around the world that seek to bring students from all over the world to study together, learn the cultures of the world and train to be future leaders of their various countries.
It is focused on fostering world unity in the hope to training the future leaders with this quality inculcated in them. I was one of the lucky two hundred students in UWS-USA representing ninety different countries. At the end of my two years in the school, I graduated with my International Baccalaureate diploma and the impact of three hundred students from a hundred and fifteen different countries leaving their cultures with me. I got accepted into eight US universities, out of which I chose Princeton University. Here I am today, a Princeton University undergraduate, educating with the world's future elite. It is a long story to tell but I hope this is a good summary. I hope that this achievement of mine so far and my perseverance will end up having a great impact on a good number of people; I know that my name is on the lips of every parent in my village whenever they are giving advice to their children. That is the impact I want to have on those who consider themselves as the unfortunate class. Someday, I want my autobiography to tell them that with perseverance, all is possible.
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Richmond Adusei Owusu (Class of 2003) 
