From West Philadelphia to Ivy League, local student is making history
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- From West Philadelphia to the Ivy League, Alyssa Perren has worked her way to the top not only in the classroom but also on the polo field. The Paul Robeson High School student is also making history in the process.
Alyssa was 3 years old the first time she got on a horse.
"It's crazy because I don't really remember having fear," she said. "I always knew that polo is what I'm going to do."
For the past three years, the 17-year-old has spent countless hours at Chamounix Stables nestled in the heart of Philadelphia's West Fairmount Park.
"There's no better feeling in the world," Alyssa said. "It makes me feel like I can just immerse myself into a whole different world."
Her hard work all led up to this emotional moment a few weeks ago.
Alyssa recently found out she has earned a spot in Harvard University's Class of 2027, where she'll also be playing on the women's polo team.
"It still hasn't really settled in that that's where I'm going to go," Alyssa said. "I knew who I did it for, from the beginning."
To understand who she did it for, you have to understand where she's come from.
"It feels like home," she said. "I never stopped longing to be here."
Alyssa learned to play polo through a nonprofit organization called Work to Ride, an equestrian program for inner-city kids in Philadelphia.
"It gives us a home away from home. It allows us to kind of find a place that's safe," Alyssa said. "And to just be together."
"My real journey started when I was around 14 years old," she added, "and my dad was like, if this is something that you want to do, you really have to put forth the effort, and this is going to be all you. So, it taught me to be independent and to really commit to something."
Alyssa is weeks away from graduating from Paul Robeson High School in West Philadelphia, where 100% of the students are considered to be economically disadvantaged. She's the first student ever from Robeson to be accepted to an Ivy League school.
"I was screaming at the top of my lungs, inside of my office," Paul Robeson High School principal Richard Gordon said. "We were a school 10 years ago that was on the closing list to be permanently closed by the City of Philadelphia. To turn this school around, and reach this pinnacle of now having students attend Ivy League schools, it's an amazing transformation. She's the actual symbol that dreams do come true."
"We're so proud of her. We're in awe of her," Irene Lobron with Work to Ride said. "She's really just taken advantage of every opportunity she could."
"They're like people -- they all have their preferences," Alyssa said. "What they like, what they don't like. Even people they like and they don't."
It makes leaving for Harvard all the more bittersweet.
"I can be a stamp in my school's history book," Alyssa said. "And that makes it so much more worthwhile. I know where I'm going, there's not going to be a lot of people who look like me or who came from a place that I came from."
"I want to show the people who are here that it doesn't matter how old you start, it doesn't matter where you start," she added, "as long as you commit to something that you feel like brings you joy, you can go as far as you want to."
Alyssa's dad was part of the Work to Ride program, when he was student.
Alyssa says the stables at Fairmount Park will always be home and she plans on visiting often, when she's home from school.