Sabahan lass accepted into Stanford University
Published on: Monday, May 23, 2022
By: Lorena Binisol
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Celeste Chung with her awards.
When she was notified that she was being accepted to Stanford University, in the United States, she was astonished. She described it as the beginning of her long journey to make her home state, Sabah proud and pledged to see more improvement to be made in the life of its people in the years to come.
She will be studying Feminism & Sexuality Studies and Political Science in September this year.
At a young age, she founded “Youth for the future” an NGO she set up for the purpose of striving to help young people for a better quality of education and well-being and determined to ensure that education is the main ingredient for a sustainable future.
“We created many programmes here in Sabah, including one in Madagascar which we built community centres there to teach the younger girls. We had supported 10,000 girls with education,” said Celeste.
A former student of Kinabalu International School (KIS), she is captivated with women’s issues, saying there are endless problems not addressed properly and that she would look forward to being involved in refining and improving when the time comes.
She said issues such as sexual harassment and violence alongside with stateless community (stateless children being denied education) were those she was most concerned with.
She often used to spend time (outside school) working with youths on their leadership programmes and community work.
She won an accolade; the KIS Global Citizenship Award and was a member of the IGCSE Honour Board.
Her mother, Shirley Soon was equally proud and pleased with her acceptance into the University.
She said the most important thing for parents to do is to give their all out moral support to their children, to make them feel secure and appreciated for whatever achievement they have done.
“Giving her our full support as long as she is living a life fulfilled. An activist or politician could be her purpose in life. We are all behind her dream,” said Shirley.
Shirley said parents should have an open mindset and keep encouraging their children to pursue their dreams, ambitions and passions.
“Rather, we as parents, often ‘kill’ more of their dreams than anybody else. We ought to just guide and teach our kids to turn their dreams into goals as they grow older.
Celeste is good with children, as she would give good advice and words of encouragement,” she said.
Shirley however, said that Stanford University is not officially an Ivy League as how many people recognised it to be.
“I would like to point out that although Stanford is not officially under Ivy League group, it is one of the best universities in the US,” Shirley clarified.
Her (Celeste) secret of studying smart was effectively having good revision materials, doing video conferencing with friends and a lot of past year’s papers helped her achieve good results.
Geography is her favourite subject in school as it has everything to do with everyday life, she said.
