Our Students: Some Extraordinary Stories
All Hunter students are remarkable, and some are truly extraordinary.
Valedictorian Ruben Pinkhasov ('05) came to the United States at 11 years old, not knowing any English, but knowing that he wanted to be a doctor. At Hunter he found the place where he could start to make this dream come true. Graduating with a 3.97 GPA and departmental honors in biology, Ruben was also named an honorary CUNY Jonas Salk Scholar. He is now attending Drexel University Medical School.
As profiled in The New York Times article "From Hardware to Harvard in a Few Hard Years," Van Tran is a one-time Vietnamese refugee who came to New York after spending much of his youth in the refugee camps of Thailand. Van attended Hunter full-time while also working full-time at a local hardware store. He graduated summa cum laude with a 3.96 GPA in June 2004 and was the recipient of the coveted Paul & Daisy Soros Scholarship for New Americans. He is now at Harvard in a doctoral program in sociology and social policy, funded by a scholarship awarded to only 30 of 1,000 highly qualified applicants nationwide.
Some of our students are on the family plan. Sisters Sanatha and Thera Alexis graduated in 2004 with top honors. From a family of seven in Grenada, they grew up working on their family's small farm. Coming to New York in 2000 to attend Hunter, they applied the lessons of hard work to achieve success at Hunter. Thera was a member of the Honors Science Research Program, and has gone on to a PhD program in molecular biology at Columbia. Sanatha, a Golden Key International Honor Society member, graduated with a BA/MA in economics, and is pursuing a doctorate in her field.
Melissa Colon’s (’03) parents struggled and saved to help Melissa get the education they never had. But when Melissa’s father had to go on disability and her mother lost her job, the future looked grim. Melissa, however, was determined to complete her studies and graduate on time. Throughout her Hunter career she always carried a full course load—and she always held at least one job; during her junior year she worked at three jobs simultaneously. But she graduated with honors—she was a political science major, and she spent a year in Hunter’s Public Service Scholar Program—and after graduating she was one of the 25 future public-service professionals selected for the New York City Urban Fellows Program, which provides full-time city jobs for nine months. Melissa, who ultimately plans to go on to law school, is the first in her very proud family to complete college.
