Belizean Science Student Accepted at Harvard University

You probably remember him from 2014 when he topped the P.S.E. or when he aced the C-SEC exams while at E.P. Yorke High School. Now this Belizean youth from Crooked Tree Village is headed to one of the world’s most acclaimed universities – Harvard. News Five spoke via zoom today with twenty-one-year-old Ashton Tillett, who shared with us that after his sixth form education at S.J.C.J.C. in Chemistry, Biology and Physics, he went away to further his studies and it’s been all stellar work he’s been engaged in since.

Ashton Tillett

Ashton Tillett, Accepted to Harvard University

“I went to UNCP where I majored in chemistry with a pre-med concentration and so, for a lot of years it’s been chem., bio and physics. My interests right now stem over stem cell biology, neurobiology, neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar. So this summer, my research is looking at using stem cells (inaudible) to kind of see how we can develop therapeutics for schizophrenia and bipolar. So I started yesterday and this is my second day. I’ve been kind of shadowing the PI and the workers in the lab to see what they do and seeing what the projects are all about. I’m a senior at UNCP, which is in North Carolina, and I graduate in December, so I go back after this summer to UNCP. And then hopefully, after I graduate In December I have something set up, like a job to work for a year and a half or two before applying to medical school. Last year November, December, I applied to a bunch of research internships – some of them were also medicine-related because I’m also interested in medicine, and I submitted my transcript, my research statement, my letters of recommendation and I just waited to see which ones I would get accepted to and I just kinda went about life and then when I got accepted into a bunch of them, I was like WOW! This is pretty amazing! I did it because I wanted to gain experience. I wanted to meet new people, network with people, so I think this is the perfect opportunity for that.”