‘Life is like a box of chocolates’: Alumni share their diverse paths after Gunn

Gunn alumna Shannon Lin discovered graphic design through a friend after years of traditional art forms including drawing, painting and woodblock printing. Her junior year, she made the transition to focus more on digital art. Lin is now a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) as a BXA Design and Decision Science major. To apply as a Design and Decision Science major, there are additional...

After graduating in 2020, Gunn alumna Livia Bednarz has spent her time working, designing and spending time with family. Unlike most seniors, who choose to attend a four-year university, Bednarz decided to take a gap year after high school, resuming her school journey as the class of 2025 at Tufts University. For Bednarz, taking a gap year was influenced by her environment. “COVID-19 was the reason...

Out of the 20 million Americans enrolled in an undergraduate college in the fall of 2021, only 16,000 attended the U.S. Naval Academy, according to Statista. Gunn alumna Jennifer Gao is one of them. While Gao spent most of high school playing water polo and writing for The Oracle, she discovered her interest in military service through a Naval Academy program called "Summer Seminar." "I really l...

When faced with the choice of where he would attend college in 2020, Gunn alumnus Marek Hertzler was unsatisfied with his options after receiving decisions from the schools he applied to. Instead of settling for a school that didn’t seem like a perfect fit for him, Hertzler decided to attend Foothill College for a year before transferring to the University of California (UC) at Berkeley this school...