Verda Tetteh recently graduated from Fitchburg High School in Massachusetts and will be heading to Harvard in the fall. She was offered a ton of scholarships, but interrupted her own graduation ceremony to make an announcement: She would not be accepting one of them.
Instead, Tetteh requested that an entire $40,000 she was due to receive be given to someone attending a community college, as according to her, "Someone else needs it more than me, and there just was no excuse why I wouldn't give it up when that was the right thing to do."
The entire graduating class gave Tetteh a standing ovation, as did her mother Rosemary Annan, who was watching from the crowd. She told NBC Boston, "That touched my heart, I would do that, I know I would do that, she's learned from me over the years."
Tetteh says she still could have used the scholarship, but did receive several smaller scholarships and financial aid to attend Harvard in the fall, where she will be majoring in chemistry on a pre-med track.
