2025 Graduation at UW-Madison: Different Roads to Excellence
Lily (l) and Jenny Li to took different roads to get to UW-Madison, but are proud to have graduated together from UW-Madison PEOPLE Scholars in May.
by Jonathan Gramling
The Li sisters, Lily and Jenny, were born in Madison and raised in South Madison. Jenny is two years older than Lily and one year ahead of her academically. Both went to Lincoln Elementary School’s Open Classroom and James C. Wright Middle School. As the oldest, Jenny has been kind of a trailblazer for the family.
“I ended up going to Open Classroom for kindergarten in 2007,” Jenny said. “Because we are first generation and our teachers were prepared for me to not have any English in my vocabulary, they assumed that I only knew Chinese and they had actually prepared a translator for my parents at that point to help with things so that the transition from home life to school life could be a little more smooth. And it was kind of interesting to see that because I’m a first generation person of color. You don’t expect them to have all of those resources ready for you as soon as you get into school as a kindergartner. It was also very similar where I would be the first one to get into middle school and into high school. I would be the first one in my family to experience that transition, especially with those resources and with that knowledge of knowing that there are people around me who could help offer those resources to me to assist me on my journey in my education.”
Lily followed Jenny to the Open Classroom a year later.
“At the time, it was k-5,” Lily said. “It wasn’t like the 3-5 right now. And we went through the Open Classroom community where our classes combined. It was k-1, 2-3 and 4-5 grade working together. And we had a lot of emphasis on building that community and growing friendships and relationships and not just learning about math and science, but actually connecting to one another. I guess I didn’t have that same supportive community once I got into middle school. It was kind of a different atmosphere. I have such fond memories of the Open Classroom.”
Jenny led the way to Wright Middle School. And she applied for the PEOPLE Program during sixth grade.
“I initially applied back in sixth grade when I went to middle school,” Jenny said. “However, I didn’t get in. So I thought, ‘Hey, there must be other opportunities for me to get my tuition paid for or different efforts that I can make to get those scholarships that I could get into college. It was then in eight grade that the ITA Program had reached out to our school. And they were doing their tours to the different middle schools in the Madison area and educating students about what the ITA program was. When I applied to that program, I did get in after a couple of rounds of interviews. After that, we had programs in the summer where we would meet with our cohort learning about technology and IT and going into high school.”
Lily had a hard transition, leaving the Open Classroom family for Wright Middle School where she had more than two teachers and no sense of being in a cohort.
“Sixth grade was a very transitionary point for me,” Lily said. “It was kind of a rough spot in my life personally. I didn’t think enough people cared about me. I was just king of this very emotional, teenage girl as teenagers are.”
Her mom encouraged her to apply for the PEOPLE Program.
“My mom was telling me, ‘Oh, there’s this program that helps you get to college,’” Lily said. “And I was like, ‘But I’m in middle school. I can’t go to college right now.’”
Lily’s English class had a section on writing an essay to join the PEOPLE Program.
“I was like, ‘If this is an assignment, I might as well do it and turn it in,’” Lily said. “Honestly, At the time, I was just very much like, ‘No one’s going to take a shot at me.’ I was low optimism, just throwing my shot in the dark. I put in my application and then they said that I was accepted. It finally felt that there was someone who would take a shot at me. I was very excited to join the PEOPLE Program. I felt very connected, that there was a supportive family and community there. And I’ve been in the PEOPLE Program ever since the summer of sixth grade.”
In high school, the PEOPLE Program experience is a little more intense than the ITA Program.
“We had it a little bit differently,” Jenny said about ITA. “Although we did have tutors who were offered to us during the week, we didn’t have preparatory courses throughout the week that PEOPLE Scholars had. I do know that with Lily’s experience, she would meet up on campus with the PEOPLE Program on a weekly basis and they would do programming, tutoring and a lot more. ITA did not have that. We had tutors on hand if you did need them. And we would meet every other Saturday during the school year. And we would only do a bunch of our programming for our coursework within ITA, which was a lot of technological courses, learning about computer systems, a lot of software, computing and things like coding. It wasn’t until either junior or senior year of high school that the ITA Program started to give preparatory courses for ACT and writing for college papers and essays so that you could apply for college.”
In addition to the school year and summer support that Lily received in the PEOPLE Program, Lily also found community Personal Pathways at West High School.
“I applied to the Personal Pathways Program,” Jenny said. “It was on pilot when I went through. You would have your own personalized pathway into whatever career of interest you wanted. At the time, it was health justice and some others. They advertised that the next year, it would be computer sciences. I personally wanted to do health justice just because that is where my passion aligns with social work and everything. So I went through personalized pathways and that was throughout all four years. Essentially it was connecting our four main core classes together in a way that would, like Lincoln, build that community because we would have more collaboration between students and more collaboration between teachers. And most of our classes would connect back to a central theme. And that was health justice.”
When the time came during her senior year at West High, Lily applied to be accepted at UW-Madison and was accepted. She would become a PEOPLE Scholar.
“It was an ego booster to get accepted to UW-Madison,” Lily said. “Recently, my sister showed me a recording on me getting in and I completely forgotten how mesmerized that I was because I was sobbing in that video at the fact that I got in. It was another institution that would take a chance on me.”
Jenny’s path to UW-Madison was different. She applied to UW-Madison, but was not admitted to the freshman class.
“When I got my letter of rejection for my UW-Madison application, I felt beaten up,” Jenny said. “I felt I did something wrong even though I felt I was doing all the right things. I was doing a lot of volunteer work. I was making sure I was getting what I needed from my education and coursework. That rejection letter took a turn on me. I ended up going to Madison College instead that fall semester of 2020. It wasn’t until the spring semester of 2023 that I transferred back into UW-Madison. I didn’t have my whole undergrad experience here at UW-Madison. I got my associate’s before I got my bachelors.”
When Lily came to UW-Madison as a PEOPLE Scholar, she was a “Nervous Nellie,” as they say. PEOPLE and the campus helped her transition successfully.
“I took a lot of preparation classes,” Lily said. “I was a very anxious student. A day or two in advance, I would go to each campus building to make sure I knew where my classes were going to be held. I double checked the syllabus. I double checked the schedule on the My UW tile. And trhen when I got to campus on the first day, there were a couple of booth where people were just ushering people. They were giving directions on campus and giving free breakfast like bananas and granola bars. And it was the most welcoming thing, which definitely eased my nerves that day. And I obviously found my community at PEOPLE Program as well. At the time, we didn’t have the PEOPLE classroom yet. But we still had the freshman PEOPLE class that we took. There I got to see the same people, familiar people I got to talk with and just navigate college. They answered all of our questions like, ‘How’s dorm life? How do we navigate finding an apartment? What do we do about budgeting?’ I think with everything that the university had to offer, including the PEOPLE Program, I wasn’t as overwhelmed as I thought I would be.”
When Jenny became a PEOPLE Scholar as a junior, PEOPLE helped her make the transition as well.
“Because I was a transfer student, my advisor at the time was Goodson Vue,” Jenny said. “He gave me affirmation, making sure I was okay and checked up on me. He made sure my transition was going well for me from a community college to the university. It was nice and reassuring that he was always there to help guide me through that journey and that transition as well as introducing me to other scholars within the PEOPLE Program who were in my cohort. I could also access academic support.”