Going to college seems to be getting more and more difficult for today's youth. But it's not the getting in part that keeps prospective college students and their parents up all night — it's how they're going to afford it once they get in.
Thankfully, for seven underprivileged, yet determined, high school students, that worry just eased up a bit thanks to an extremely selfless classmate.
Allan Guei, a basketball standout who recently graduated from Compton High School, was one of eight participants from the school chosen to take part in a free-throw contest for the chance to win a $40,000 scholarship.
After winning the competition between eight Compton High School seniors with a GPA of at least 3.0, Guei found out he had received a full-ride to California State University-Northridge. NCAA rules stipulate that Guei could keep the $40,000 in addition to the full-ride, but he instead chose to give it away to other students, according to msnbc.com — something that, when added up, equals a lot more than just $40,000.
Guei decided to donate the money he won in the competition to the seven other competitors, asking the principal to make a special announcement.
"I've already been blessed so much and I know we're living with a bad economy, so I know this money can really help my classmates," Guei said in a statement. "It was the right decision."
Each contestant was to receive a $5,000 scholarship whether they won or lost, but with Guei's donation, each "loser" will walk away with about an $11,000 head start on college.
"It was a shock," Omar Guzman, 17, a runner-up who plans to use the money to attend San Diego State University, told msnbc.com. "I'm really grateful there are people like that out there. It was generous."
The idea was started by screenwriter Court Crandall, whose most well-known movie is ironically the college classic, Old School.
Aware of Compton's image problem, Crandall decided to try and fix that by shining some much needed publicity on the kids who grow up in a poverty-stricken area and are still able to flourish in the classroom. If Crandall was a director, he couldn't have casted a better fit than Guei, whose unselfish act was exactly what Crandall was searching for.
"It was the perfect ending," Crandall told TODAY.com. "I was ecstatic about how everything turned out … Most kids don't have the sense of composure or leadership that [Allan] does, so after spending time with him and getting to know him, I really wasn't that surprised by what he did."
Crandall is developing a documentary about the competition in the hope of jumpstarting a new stereotype for the Compton area. With the free-throw competition as the focus, Crandall is telling the stories of Compton students in the process.
The eight students were selected randomly from a group of 80 Compton High School seniors with a 3.0 GPA or higher. Crandall plans to submit the full-length documentary, Free Throw, to the Sundance Film Festival in September.
