Michael N. Castle Quotes

My mother was very strong on me to go to college. No one had ever been to college, including my parents.

Education is an incredibly personal issue for me. If you're the first generation to go to college, sometimes you don't realize your potential until others point it out.

For whole swaths of people, that map of, 'Come along this way, come to college, do this and that,' isn't offered.

My youngest uncle Randy and I were the first members of our entire family to ever go to college.

No one in my family had ever even gone to college.

For me, education has never been simply a policy issue - it's personal. Neither of my parents and hardly anyone in the neighborhood where I grew up went to college. But thanks to a lot of hard work and plenty of financial aid, I had the opportunity to attend some of the finest universities in this country.

I was the first in my family to go to college.

Yeah, my parents really valued education; they were both educators. But it was definitely true that I grew up in an area where a lot people didn't go to college. A lot of people did two years, a kind of terminal two years at community college.

I was the only kid out of six of us to go to college, primarily because my parents could not afford it.

I applied to Yale, and I got in.

The first dream I had was just to get a college education. I got through college in three years, taking extra classes in summer school.

I turned down a scholarship to Yale. The problem with college is that there's a tendency to mistake preparation for productivity. You can prepare all you want, but if you never roll the dice you'll never be successful.

My dad, in particular, was adamant that I should finish my education. He encouraged me to go to Oxford, for instance, and I rather doubt I'd have gone if he hadn't. I would have gone straight back to L.A. and tried to start my career.

Typically, historical black colleges and universities like Delaware State, attracted students who were raised in an environment where going to college wasn't the next natural step after high school.

It is one thing to take as a given that approximately 70 percent of an entering high school freshman class will not attend college, but to assign a particular child to a curriculum designed for that 70 percent closes off for that child the opportunity to attend college.

Fewer than 13 percent of high school students will continue to study math and science in college—usually the most well-prepared and persistent students who often come from families where encouragement and enrichment is fundamental

It was sort of assumed, from the time I was born, really, that I would go to college. That's sort of the way that Jewish families in New Jersey handled things; that was the norm.

I was the first in my family to go to college, and so, growing up, I thought that dressing well opened doors.

I am a first-generation college graduate, and I'm proud to say that most of my other siblings have college degrees as well. Our parents taught us to work hard and never forget our family roots, where we came from, and how much effort it took to get to where we are today.

As the first member of my immediate family to graduate from college, I understand the importance access to high quality education plays in preparing our children to learn and compete in a competitive, global workforce.

When I was 18, graduating high school, I was going to the University of Missouri.

There's a lot of amazing people that don't get into college.

Our family story here is one that we're proud of, and that is that, as the ninth of 10 kids in our family, I was the first who, right out of high school, was able to go to four-year college... it was a big moment in our family's life.

By the time I got to George Washington University, I had been a straight-A student in high school.

Education, in K-12, technical college and universities needs to be a top priority in Wisconsin.