Of roughly 48,000 applicants, 750 high school seniors, including Shaylin Adams of East Jessamine High School, have been chosen as Gates scholars.

The Gates Scholarship is highly selective. Shaylin did the math, and any given applicant had about a 1.5 percent chance of being accepted. 

The scholarship is meant for outstanding minority school seniors from low-income households. According to Gatesscholarship.org, the scholarship is awarded to “exceptional student leaders, with the intent of helping them realize their maximum potential.”

But Shaylin’s efforts started long before she was encouraged by her school’s college and career counselor, Lindsey Mulcahy, to apply for the scholarship.

As a freshman, Shaylin took AP World and more AP classes in Sophomore year. She received a four out of five on every AP test she’s ever taken. Last year, Shaylin took all dual credit classes, including history, English, math, and science. She realized that her dual credit history textbook was the same one used for the AP U.S. (APUSH) History class, so she took the APUSH and received a four. 

“I really just grinded all three years, but this year, I decided to take a step back and really focus on getting my experiences in with the choir and being able to lock in on my extracurriculars more than my harsh academics,” she said.

Shaylin has been in choir and theater since the sixth grade. “For the past two years, I’ve been co-choreographer for our school’s musical, which just went up this past week. It was really amazing. It was School of Rock.” This year, she also joined BETA and the National Honor Society (NHS), which includes “a lot of community involvement and community service,” she said. 

Shaylin said her counselor, Mulcahy, has been on her since the beginning of the school year to apply for the Gates Scholarship. “She knew me very well. I started meeting with her at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school. People don’t typically meet with her until their senior year to deal with their senior checkout. So I was very on it about my future and wanting to do well, and [Mulcahy] knew beforehand what I had done to get there. She knew that I had a very high chance, so she really just helped me through everything, with any FAFSA questions to get everything right. She just provided me the space to write, gave me critiques, and helped me understand how big of a shot this was,” Shaylin said.

She’s always been busy with the arts or studying in high school, and Shaylin said Mulcahy made sure she continued with the application process despite juggling so much this year. 

“It’s really amazing because [the Gates application] was a very arduous process. I had started applying for it in August and just found out this past April 20. It involved questionnaires and sending in FAFSA early, so being on top of that. It included additional essays and an interview online, which was very stressful and very high stakes. Knowing beforehand that it was 1.5 percent acceptance [was] insane. I really was just baffled. I found out in the Drake’s parking lot. I started crying; I FaceTimed my grandfather,” Shaylin said. “[The scholarship] follows you wherever you go, and I was reading it: they provide things like a computer and…a study abroad experience if it applies for credit. They are truly just throwing money my way so that I can be successful, and it’s insane.” Shaylin said she is proud of herself and that she worked very hard. 

Besides Mulcahy, Shaylin went through the process of applying for this prestigious scholarship alone: “I actually didn’t tell anybody that I was going through this process. I didn’t tell my choir teacher. I didn’t really talk to my friends too much about it. When they brought it up, I kind of pushed it to the side ‘cause I knew it was a small chance, and I didn’t want to get anybody’s hopes up. A lot of [my friends] will say she’s the smartest person I know. And that’s wrong, but I appreciate it, and they always expect that I’m gonna do well, so I didn’t want to tell them that, and they get upset with me ’cause I didn’t get it.” 

Shaylin applied to seven schools: New York University, UNC Charlotte, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Florida, University of Louisville, University of Kentucky, and Eastern Kentucky University. She wasn’t accepted into UF due to a requirement of two years of Spanish, “which makes sense because of their population,” Shaylin said. She got accepted into UNC Charlotte, Eastern, UK, and Louisville. 

She decided to attend Louisville because she was also offered two prestigious scholarships that only ten students receive yearly. She had to confirm or deny her acceptance before hearing about the Gates scholarship, so she accepted. Since then, she has declined the full-ride offer of the Martin Luther King Jr. and Border scholarships from Louisville to give someone else that opportunity. After a couple of years at the University of Louisville, she plans on transferring outside of the state for school. 

Shaylin will be majoring in marketing, intending to go into music marketing. “I want to help artists get to where they want to be. I’ve always loved music and such being my extracurriculars, but I never wanted to be a performer; I just wanted to help somebody get there. So I really want to do that, which is why I chose Louisville because it has a very urban atmosphere. I can have connections with the Yum! Center, hopefully, and music festivals, and get good internships there. I really just want to help artists go to their full fruition if that makes sense.”

Shaylin’s parents never went to college, and her grandparents went but never received degrees. Thus, she will be attending university as a first-generation college student. 

When asked if there was anything more she would like to say, Shaylin praised her experience in the arts at East. “I just want to talk about how the choir is really helpful to people because without them, I would have never found my wording and found my footing in who I wanted to be, and they encouraged me through everything.” 

When she learned she had received the full-ride scholarship, she spoke to Mulcahy and said, “you’re looking at a Gates scholar!” Shaylin said Mulcahy “freaked out” and had Shaylin go into the choir room and tell everyone. “I had to tell everybody, I think, four times because people kept walking in, so I had to restart. It was baffling that all these people I’ve known forever and supported me, [got] excited for me. I think that if people go into the arts and really realize how much their classes [mean] and who they involve themselves with…[it]…affects [them]…when going through school, if you don’t care about your classes, you can’t be surprised when things don’t work out that way. So you really have to put in that effort to have fun later. I just wanted to tell people that.”