and Salutatorian Maria Kulapurathazhe
By Dan Murphy
Yonkers Rising renews our yearly tradition of highlighting the academic excellence and achievement of high school seniors who are this year’s valedictorians and salutatorians. The group of vals and sals in Yonkers Public Schools were honored at a lunch last week, but we will feature every val and sal in YPS, and from Sacred Heart H.S.
We start with Yonkers Middle-High School and Valedictorian Liubov Samborska and Salutatorian Maria Kulapurathazhe. Both completed their degrees in the competitive and challenging International Baccalaureate program.
Liubov will graduate with a 103.14 grade-point average. Her favorite subjects are chemistry, biology and calculus. She most enjoyed learning from advanced placement chemistry teacher Diana Cherian. “She has a great teaching style and taught us to take charge of our own education,” the student said of Cherian. “She is also active in the community, which is what I aspire to be.”
Liubov took three AP courses and eight IB courses.
Her extra-curricular activities including founding a club at YHS called “Cards for Kids.” “We create handmade cards for children in hospitals,” said Liubov. “We made about 50 last year and we gave them to Golden Heroes who sent them out, and we have another batch ready to send out this year.”
Liubov started Cards for Kids at her high school as a way to “connect with art and to try and destress a little by expressing ourselves.” She also was a member of the Science Olympiad Team, which made it to the state tournament this year and is improving every year, and she volunteers at the Summer Science Research Academy with middle-school students at YPS.
Liubov applied to a dozen schools, including New York University, Yale, Columbia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke Johns Hopkins, SUNY Binghamton and Stony Brook – but said she preferred Yale and Johns Hopkins. She was accepted to both, and offered a full scholarship to both schools.
At the time we interviewed Liubov, she was still undecided as to where she will go, and said she plans to spend some time at both schools before she makes her final decision. She plans to study bio-medical engineering and said she hopes to “put my science to work.” She can also use her language skills – she is trilingual in Russian, Ukrainian and English – in her future endeavors.
Liubov has a wonderful life story: Originally from Ukraine, her mother moved to the United States, and Yonkers, before bringing her over when she was 12. Together, Liubov and her mom have had many challenges, and she points to her mother as the person who has helped her achieve academic greatness. “She is proud of me but she sees to it that I stay strong and know that I can accomplish anything,” said Liubov.
She also thanked her friends at Yonkers Middle High, including Salutatorian Maria Kulapurathazhe. “When I was young, I wasn’t as comfortable here, but the students made me feel accepted,” she said.
Liubov offered advice for young students who want to become valedictorian: “Regardless of where you end up, you can find happiness,” she said. “Always look for that place of happiness and see yourself there.”
Maria Kulapurathazhe will graduate with a 102. 63 GPA, and together with Liubov, the two will most likely be the two highest-achieving high school seniors in YPS. We asked both when they started to watch their class rank and whether there was any competition between them.
Maria said the two met in the ninth grade and took many classes together later in high school years, and there was a friendship, and not a rivalry between then. She added that last year, her rank slipped to number five because of a tough AP calculus class. “I had to push myself to get back to number two,” she said. “We lifted each other up and shared some laughs and tears.”
Liubov added that Maria “was my therapist many nights on the phone.”
Maria said her favorite subject has been biology and the teachers she enjoyed learning from are Diana Cherian in AP chemistry and Dr. Lesia Kaszczak in IB biology. “Both were incredibly motivating and gave us 110 percent of their abilities,” she said. “They taught us not just about the course, but life to come.”
Maria’s extra-curricular activities include tutoring her fellow students in math, “to try and give back what I’ve learned,” she said. She was also a member of the Architectural Construction Engineering Team. “We developed models and came up with a project idea of building refugee shelters in Yonkers,” said Maria.
She also was a member of the Science Olympiad Team for six years, which “was a great way to enrich my interest in science.” Creating a badminton team at YHS and serving as a junior docent at the Hudson River Museum round out her non-academic interests.
Maria has taken three AP courses and 12 IB courses, and applied to 12 colleges and universities, including Cornell, NYU, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Princeton and Columbia. She was accepted to nine colleges and is undecided between NYU and CUNY Macaulay Honors at City College.
Finances will play a role in her decision; NYU gave her a 50 percent scholarship, with a remaining cost of $35,000 per year, while Macaulay has offered her free tuition. With either choice that she makes, Maria will enjoy attending college in New York City.
“In the future, I hope to attain a degree in biomedical engineering, as I love the marriage this field creates between the disciplines of science and mathematics,” she said. “I see this major as also a perfect opportunity to apply biological principles to the creation of instruments and tools that can advance the medical field. Although I love the STEM field, I am also interested in pursuing my interests in the liberal arts field. I am especially interested in pursuing a minor in journalism, as I would perceive it as a great personal accomplishment to be able to share my scientific discoveries to the rest of the world through my own words.”
Maria thanked her parents, who moved from India to America so that she could have a chance at the American dream. “They kept pushing me, but I am grateful because they gave up so much to come here and their example gives me so much motivation in life,” she said.
Maria said the reason she likes walking into Yonkers High School every day is the amount of diversity present in the building. “Not only are we a school of dozens of different cultures, but the diversity is also present in each of our individual mindsets,” she said. “Every one of my classes is made more enjoyable by the various ways my peers and I examine different situations and scenarios.”
She offered the following advice for aspiring salutatorians: “The thing about success is that it comes when you least expect it… No matter how many stumbling blocks are put in your way to make you fall, it’s the continued willingness to get up again that makes the accomplishment you will achieve all the more meaningful.”
Congratulations, Liubov and Maria.
