Before Cielo Echegoyén got accepted there last fall, only three Santa Ana High School students ever had been admitted to Harvard University.
For Cielo, the mileposts along her arduous journey from Orange County to Cambridge, Mass., included countless nights poring over books at the public library until closing time it was too crowded to study at her family’s apartment and three operations to correct a disorder called funnel chest that caused her breastbone to press against her heart and lungs.
“She was falling behind in school due to her surgeries,” recalled her mother, Elvia Soriano. “But a month or two later she was at the same [academic] level as before.”