Education: Kenyan Girl Off to a Flying Start to Be an Architect - Sunday Nation Report.

By - Elvis Ondieki |Sunday Nation:

Exams, applications and recruitment processes can be exhausting and challenging, and sometimes demoralising when we don't get the results we want.

But 14-year-old Tracy Okech is grateful for the hurdles she jumped over because they have brought her closer to her dream of being an architect and desire to study overseas.

She is currently adjusting to life in Wisconsin, United States, as she counts down to finishing her first month abroad for university preparatory education.

Two Tuesdays ago, emotions ran high at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport as Tracy bade farewell to her family.

Her ambition of being an architect, she promised, would be pursued with zeal overseas.

Tracy, who until August was a Form One student at Alliance Girls High School, flew out because she had won a partial scholarship at the North Cedar Academy, located on the west of the US state of Wisconsin.

She is now enrolled as a 10th grade learner in the university preparatory school. She will spend the next three years at the institution, after which she will be ready to join university.

SCHOLARSHIP

Securing a partial scholarship at North Cedar Academy was no walk in the park.

It started early this year when she sat the Standard Secondary Admission Test (SSAT), while a student at Alliance.

"I did the exam in February. They marked it and sent to the school. The exam was also sent to other schools that use that system," said Tracy, days before she flew out.

At Makini School - where she sat her KCPE exam last year - she scored 421 marks out of the possible 500.

Makini chose Tracy among its best eight learners who would take the SSAT. This is because a Connecticut-based school, Choate Rosemary Hall, was looking for international students to enrol.

But Choate took long to get back, according to Tracy's mother Everlyne Okech.

"They put her on the wait list. And we are still waiting," she said.

Because there are other institutions in North America that are attached to the examination body that administered the SSAT exam, Tracy's grades drew the interest of at least 21 schools.

"Many didn't have scholarships or their levels of support were too low," said Mrs Okech. "We acknowledged receipt of their emails and just applied to the ones that had scholarships."

HURDLES

Before North Cedar Academy could take her in, Tracy had to do various other tests on top of the SSAT exam.

She had to write at least three essays and do several Skype interviews -- which meant that her mother sometimes had to ask for permission for her to be released from Alliance to take the tests.

"Essay topics covered issues like where I would like to go on vacation, the advantages and disadvantages of online money, the movie that you have watched, the person that inspires you most and such," said Tracy.

After the lengthy process, Tracy was finally given a US visa, which was the ultimate assurance that she would be admitted at North Cedar, where she will join another student from Ethiopia and another from Rwanda.

"I'll miss the way the teachers taught," she said of Alliance Girls.

Her mother, a counselling psychologist and adjunct lecturer at Marist University, is ready to help Kenyans with children of Tracy's age bracket, who would like to travel the same route.

Tracy, the third and last born, is one of the two daughters of renowned editor, columnist and university journalism lecturer Okech Kendo.

"Work hard and do exactly what you say you want to do. Open up your mind and be a child of the world," Kendo told Tracy before she left.

Tracy's mother described her as a voracious reader who always plans ahead. The 14-year-old said she believes her story will be an inspiration to many Kenyan children who would hope to study abroad.

"Hard work pays. If you work hard, you'll obviously have to get something out of it later," Tracy said.

His story was first published in the Sunday Nation.