Standing out is not easy at Rufus King International High School, recently named the third best high school in Wisconsin by U.S. News and World Report and one that consistently produces top scholars.
Meet Helen Fetaw. Last year’s senior class president. Swim and forensics team member. Head of a student organization and member of the Youth Health Service Corps.
And one other thing: She’s just 16 years old.
In a few weeks, the high-achieving Fetaw will be a freshman at the Ivy League’s University of Pennsylvania.
“I’ve never had one so young,” said Jill Boeck, guidance counselor at King, as she discusses the many successful students that walk through her door.
Boeck, who counsels 400 other college aspiring students a year, said to stand out among them, students have to work a little harder, and be more insistent.
“She seeks out opportunities when she sees them,” Boeck said. ‘She’s puts evertything into what she does.”
It’s a trait she learned from her parents, Fetaw said. They’re originally from Eritrea, which borders Sudan and Ethiopia, but emigrated to Italy, where Helen was born, before moving to the U.S. when she was 3.
Like many immigrants, her parents didn’t wait for opportunities to improve the family’s prospects. They went out and worked hard, she said.
Fetaw said she’d watch while her mother, Maria, sat for hours a day in the small kitchen table of their northwest side home, poring over her nursing books for school, all while also caring for Helen and her two sisters.