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His maternal grandmother\u2019s support paved that path leading to the Ivy League. The dynamic mother\/daughter duo taught Simms there is no shame in failure, never criticizing or berating him when things turned out differently than he expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said, \u201cThey always made sure that I took the learning experience out of it. But they also always let me know that failure wasn\u2019t the end of the road and that you could pave a new road out of it. They really helped shape my mindset into \u2018I can do whatever I put my mind to\u2019 through their positivity and overarching support.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Lincoln County High School graduate received acceptance letters from Yale, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen it came down to it, Yale\u2019s considered one of the big three \u2014 Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. The name is recognized globally, and I just couldn\u2019t turn down a full, free-ride offer from Yale. I don\u2019t think anybody could have done that,\u201d said Simms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Simms and his family moved from Central Alabama to Lincoln County when he was in middle school. He discovered that the tight-knit community around his new home differed from his early life, where he felt no one cared about his neighbor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Simms said, \u201cHere, everyone I\u2019ve seen, especially the people who are actively doing things, care. That\u2019s not common outside of Lincoln County.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As soon as the pandemic allowed, Simms began to give back to the community through work with the Fayetteville-Lincoln County Animal Shelter and other area nonprofits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI started coordinating events and fundraisers [for the shelter], and that\u2019s where I began my community involvement,\u201d he said. \u201cThen it extended with me actively taking a role in Lift LC at the high school. When I went back to school my junior year, I took on the role as the community lead, where I coordinated outreach to the feeder schools and nonprofits in the community to spread mental health awareness beyond the walls of the high school.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Simms\u2019 involvement in lifting up his community will transition naturally to Yale. He\u2019ll get an early start by moving to campus before the fall semester and is excited to begin the new chapter of his life and plans to major in neuroscience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAfter committing and learning more about them, I know that it\u2019s the exact place that I need to be because they\u2019re so community-based,\u201d said Simms. \u201cI think everybody has their niche that gets into an Ivy. You don\u2019t get into an Ivy by doing 10,000 things. You have your one thing, and you\u2019re really good at it. My one thing has been community throughout the past four years, and Yale is such a community that I think I will fit right in.\u201d GN<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AN IVY League mentality is in Jay Simms\u2019 DNA. At home, college football helmets lined up on a table and hanging on the walls testify to his dad\u2019s love of the game. He impressed upon his son that the helmets of Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown represented the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":18521,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/goodnewsmags.com\/fayetteville\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2023\/07\/jay-simms-3-e1691606265284-1024x683.jpg\")
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