Juniors from all over North Carolina enjoyed a picnic at NCSSM-Durham after Move-In. (photo: Brian Faircloth)
With a month of classes now securely in their pockets, NCSSM’s newest students are making Science and Math their new home away from home. And what a range of locales they come from, with students coming from as far away as the wave-lapped beaches of the Outer Banks to the forested mountains and valleys of North Carolina’s western borderlands. Combined, these 480+ students of NCSSM’s junior class represent two-thirds of North Carolina’s counties, and well over 200 of the state’s high schools.
They’re all part of a long-running, yet freshly invigorated, demonstration of what our state’s young people can achieve when resources meet conviction.
Ellie Miller ’28 is a piece of that picture. The Morganton junior is from Whittier, a small Western North Carolina community in Swain and Jackson Counties where the river and the train tracks run parallel through the mountain valley. Ellie came to NCSSM-Morganton after hearing as both a freshman and sophomore from NCSSM admissions representatives who spoke at her high school, Smoky Mountain High.
Driving Ellie’s early interest in the school was the promise of adventure in a new place. But as she learned more about NCSSM, Ellie says her interest in enrolling became rooted in the idea of living with like-minded students.
“I think the biggest things that appealed to me were, like, being surrounded by students who all wanted to work together, wanted to work hard, so I’d always have people to work with.”
With that network now around her, Ellie is looking forward to putting the pieces of her future together in a place that encourages the active pursuit of dreams.
“I really hope to find what interests me most in academics,” she says. “I want to find that area that I want to do my research in, major in in college, and find something that I’m really excited to come to every day.”
Residential Class of 2028 by the numbers
Julian Hare ’28 came to NCSSM-Durham from Nags Head, where the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Roanoke Sound lap opposite shores of his barrier island home. He crossed the bridge to Roanoke Island each day to go school at Manteo High School.
Julian is the kind of student who wants to talk with others outside of class about biology research and calculus. He began hearing “rumors” as a seventh grader of a school in Durham that offered a different kind of learning and living environment. NCSSM seemed just the place for him. Later visits from the NCSSM Admissions team confirmed it.
Still, he was surprised by what he found. Surprised in a good way. There was more to NCSSM than he had imagined.
“I thought that the atmosphere in the community and the people would be more in line with what I [had] directly experienced. Like a bunch of little clones of me walking around the place,” he says. “But it’s really not. There are so many different people with different experiences that are still like-minded. I get to see all these different people who are all still interested in the same things I am, and they’re passionate about the same things I want to talk about, but we all come from crazy different walks of life. It’s just an eye-opening experience.”
NCSSM was founded as an experiment where a single factor – the desire to achieve one’s full potential – could unify a diverse set of students from every conceivable background and every region of the state into a single supportive community of learners eager to engage with opportunity.
It’s no longer an experiment. It’s a demonstrated fact; one that new students like Ellie and Julian continue to exemplify every day. Two different campuses housing a fascinating array of origin stories. But the school, and the students who call it home for two years, remain as they always have: a renowned community for those with the courage and motivation to accept what NCSSM calls “The Greater Challenge.”
