Clarke Peoples is as good as it gets from North Atlanta High School. She is the President of North Atlanta’s Student Body Government, just recently  accepted into one of the most prestigious schools in the world, and selected as one of the National Delegates to represent Georgia at the 2019 United States Senate Youth Program.

The Senate Youth Program is a week-long program hosted in Washington-D.C. by the U.S. Senate and Hearst Foundation. The mock Senate hosts two delegates from each state to study government first hand and receive a $10,000 undergraduate scholarship. Peoples had to take a rigorous exam and then was selected because she was one of the top scorers in Georgia. After she was put through an interview she was finally selected as one of the two delegates to represent our state. This is a huge achievement as she is the first person from North Atlanta to ever be selected to attend.

Peoples recently found she was accepted into Columbia University’s Class of 2023, Columbia is an Ivy League school in Upper Manhattan, New York City. Peoples is attending Columbia, but what she is really doing is following her dreams. “I want to become an attorney and now I am one step closer to that.”

She first set her eyes on Columbia when she was vacationing in the Big Apple with her mom. “I absolutely fell in love with the Morningside Heights neighborhood and the university itself,” said Peoples, “Ever since then, I’ve been so excited about the idea of living in NYC and all of the career opportunities that it presents.”

Peoples has had her heart set on Columbia and only Columbia for the past two years. She was convinced that her passion and determination for law and politics and would get her into her dream school, and she was right. She worked her hardest in all extracurriculars that would put her in competition with the best of the best. She gained leadership positions in said clubs so she would have experience in what her passion is and have something to reflect on to determine what her goals for her future, her after college plans are. “I had a four-year plan as a freshman, I pretty much planned out exactly how I wanted my high school career to go,” she said.

Columbia is a great school to go to not only because of its extremely high status but because it  has students from all over the world who bring such interesting perspectives to classroom discussions and debates. “I can’t wait to meet as many people as I can and learn about their varied cultures and interests,” said Peoples.

All of these amazing things and the best part may be the fact that she gets to go for free. Peoples recently found out that because of Columbia’s great financial aid program she will be attending the Ivy League school at no cost. “It’s in the greatest city in the world and I get to go,” she said.

Peoples has had an extraordinary high-school career and after May comes and she leaves this old IBM building, that she made so great, for the last time she will begin her new life and future in the city so nice, they named it twice. Chapeaux to you Clarke!