At 11, She Moved to America and Didn’t Speak English. Her Family Burst Into Tears She Got Harvard Acceptance

Yasmim Barros only knew how to say “mom” and “thank you” when she moved to the U.S. at age 11, about seven years ago.

But this June, she graduated from East Side High School in Newark, N.J., as class president, a track star, and received a full scholarship to attend Harvard University.

“I’m making my family proud,” says Barros, 18. “My family’s really happy that their hard work has paid off. I was raised by a village, quite literally.”

Barros was born in northern Brazil. Her mother, Glaucia Barros Dos Santos, moved to the U.S. when Yasmim was just 2, so her grandparents raised her and her older brother, Kaua.

“They’re really good people,” she says. “I loved growing up with my cousins.”

About ten years later, Barros and her brother traveled with their father to reunite with their mom, who was working as a housecleaner in Newark.

To learn English, Barros used movies, music, and books — reading in both English and Portuguese — “to help me get the hang of it,” she says.

“I tried my best.”

That effort paid off: At East Side High, she became student council president, yearbook editor, captain of the track and cross country teams, and joined the National Honor Society, the Portuguese National Honor Society, and the Math Honor Society.

“She’s involved in everything,” says Carlos Rodriguez, East Side’s principal. “She wants to see change.”

Barros explains: “I believe in myself and I believe that I can do whatever I put my mind to. If I didn’t believe in myself, I would have likely not even tried going to Harvard.”

The teen, who enjoys reading and baking, often spent time in Rodriguez’s office advocating for students. She also helped start a middle school track program.

“She’s an awesome kid,” Rodriguez says.

Her school guidance counselor, Anabel Lago, agrees. “She wouldn’t give up,” Lago says.

For her college application, Barros wrote an essay about the lessons her grandfather taught her on how to water plants.

“You have to have patience and understand those plants. Some plants need a lot of water, some don’t need any. I used that lesson in my relationships with friends and everyone around me,” she says.

“This is not just my achievement. I didn’t get here just because of me — it’s because everyone helped give me the opportunities I needed and shaped me into who I am today.”

Next month, Barros will start classes at Harvard. She will be the first in her family to attend college. When she got her acceptance to the Ivy League school, her family was overwhelmed with emotion.

“They were crying a lot,” she says. “There were a lot of tears from everyone.”

She plans to study at the Institute of Politics and focus on political science, with hopes of practicing constitutional or international law in the future.

“I’m still deciding,” she says. “I really want to help change the world.”