YORK COUNTY, Va. — If you have ever worried about what kind of hands our future is in, this story may give you some peace of mind. Aruesha Srivastava is truly at the head of her class.
She's about to graduate from Grafton High School in York County and just got news most other grads could only dream of.
"I was shocked,” she said during my recent visit between classes. “I was like wow, I really got this opportunity to expand my knowledge and go to a place where I think I can truly belong."
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Aruesha has been accepted into the California Institute of Technology. That's incredibly rare. For every 100 applicants to Cal Tech, only three are accepted. That makes it—just about—the toughest school in the nation to get into.
She is a whiz by the way, excelling in science, tech, business, you name it.
“My goal is to really blend my passion in biotechnology, and also entrepreneurship to really be able to create products that can potentially help save lives globally," she said.
Remember—Aruesha is just 17 years old and already has plans to use her smarts to do good in the world. She founded a non-profit group with other students at Grafton called Heal America. The name is part of her mission.
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“That’s something that I have a goal of, is to be able to use my STEM to benefit people, not just in America, not just in my community, but people across the world who really need access to these medical devices,” she said.
Aruesha is already off to a good start. During the pandemic, she and her teammates organized mask and supply drives on the Peninsula. Now, their impact stretches across Virginia. The students have already collected donations for women's shelters. They’ve also helped restock bare shelves at area food banks.
"I started preparing like documents for legal documents for nonprofits and applied for a 501c3 status with the Secretary of State and the IRS,” she said.
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Amazingly, Aruesha does have free time away from her studies and charity work. She tells me art class is an escape, allowing her to sketch out her future on paper, as she dreams of making the world a better place.
“My parents are immigrants,” she said. “Something that they really ingrained in me is the fact that whatever you do, try to do it for the benefit of others, not just yourself. And so that's really something that I've tried to put into everything that I'm doing."
Aruesha’s family will be there to cheer her on in June, when she crosses the stage at Grafton High's School's graduation, as valedictorian.
