Deane Bozeman High School senior gets full-ride scholarship to Harvard University

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) - As the school year is quickly coming to a close, high school seniors are getting ready to move their tassels from right to left. A tough goodbye for Deane Bozeman High School Senior Taylor Zediker.

“We just walked through the elementary school and I attended the elementary school so that was really intense for me,” Zediker said.

Zediker never thought the same little girl who walked those halls would one day be walking the grounds of an Ivy League university.

“I honestly couldn’t believe it. It’s a dream of mine but like I never expected it to become a reality,” Zediker said.

Come fall 2021, Zediker will be joining the freshmen class of Harvard University on a full-ride scholarship. As a soon-to-be first-generation college student, she said her parents were just as surprised as she was when they saw the letter.

“It was the first one I opened and when it said welcome, I was very shocked. I didn’t say anything and I just stood out of the chair and walked away. Then my mom looked at my computer screen and was like, ‘Taylor you’re kidding,’” Zediker said.

It’s only a matter of weeks before she has to say goodbye to her life at Deane Bozeman School. But when one door closes, another opens. Zediker said she’s more than ready for the journey she has ahead.

“I attended Bozeman for 14 years and I love it here and I love the community and everything, but I’m really excited to meet more diverse perspectives and like a separate campus,” Zediker said.

As class Valedictorian with a 4.0 GPA, Bozeman School officials said they knew she’d be going big places.

“Very seldom you find a young person who’s just so self-motivated, who comes from humble beginnings and she has just applied herself throughout her entire academic career. And she has just thrived. And now the work is all paying off,” Deane Bozeman School Principal Ivan Beach said.

School officials said Zediker is the first student at Deane Bozeman to be accepted into the prestigious school.

Zediker was accepted to eight schools in total, including Princeton and Columbia.

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