Oakland teen Helms Ategeka accepted to 122 colleges with $5.3 million in scholarships, chooses UC Berkeley

OAKLAND, Calif. — Helms Ategeka wants to become a pop star. But when he told his father he planned to pursue music after graduating from high school next month, his father wasn't exactly thrilled.

So last fall, the Oakland, Calif., teen took a different approach: He started applying to colleges. More than 150 of them.

Shortly after, he received an acceptance letter. Then another. And another. The trickle turned into a flood until there were 122, along with some $5.3 million in grants and scholarship offers. (CNN has viewed the acceptance letters.)

His father said he was proud of Helms' 3.94 GPA and hoped his son would choose a career with financial stability, such as medicine or computer technology. Or maybe Helms could follow in his own footsteps as a mechanical engineering graduate from the University of California, Berkeley.

But as he watched the mountain of acceptance letters in his son's room grow with each mail delivery, Chris Ategeka's hope faded. The messages on the multi-colored envelopes aroused undeniable enthusiasm. “There you are!” they say. “Our family welcomes your family!” read another one.

“He's so convinced that music is what he wants to do, it would be a disservice of me to try to guide him any other way…that's why he's applied to a gazillion colleges to prove his point of view,” Ategeka said. “I said to him, 'You want to be a musician? It takes a lot of work.' And his reaction was, “I’m going to use my determination to do this and show you how hard I can work.”

But how does an 18-year-old begin to narrow down such a long list of options? Thus began a journey that came with difficult lessons about change and compromise – for both father and son.

He had a key requirement for the colleges he was applying to

Helms' life revolves around music. At Head-Royce High School in Oakland, he was part of an a cappella group that met weekly to perform covers of popular pop music. Her room is filled with CDs by Beyoncé, Prince and Bruno Mars. Before starting college in the fall, he took a summer trip to Peru with a choir to perform in churches and communities.

“I live for music. I spend most of my time listening to music, making music, or performing on stage,” says Helms. “I feel more alive and fulfilled when I’m doing something music-related.”

So when he began his college admissions journey, he had one key requirement: the school had to have a strong music program.

He primarily used college online portals for his applications, he said, which made it easy to copy and paste his information into multiple places. His father paid the registration fees required by some universities. Helms spent many hours writing essays for different schools, even though most were variations of the same personal story. In his essays, he highlighted his passion for music and his immigrant background.

A small group of schools, including Brown, Wesleyan and Colgate, rejected him or placed him on their waitlist.

But the much longer list of schools that said yes stretches across the country, from large state universities to smaller private colleges: Bard College, Drexel, Howard, Loyola Marymount, Sarah Lawrence College – and yes, UC Berkeley.

He moved to the United States just before the pandemic shut everything down.

Ategeka immigrated to the United States from his native Uganda in the late 2000s to attend the University of California, Berkeley. He moved from Helms with his mother to the town of Fort Portal in western Uganda, where he lived until joining his father in California five years ago.

Shortly after Helms arrived in the United States in 2019, the world largely shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. He attended his new school via Zoom and missed much of the interaction with others and learning the nuances of American culture. As a result, he wasn't sure his college applications would resonate or meet many requirements, he says.

“I gave my all to the application process. I contacted schools to make sure they had received my application and made sure I gave my best on my essays. But I didn’t expect so many schools to say yes, so I wasn’t prepared,” Helms says.

His modern drama teacher, Ricky Lapidus, isn't surprised that Helms has received so many offers.

“Helms loves to learn. He cares about other people as much as he cares about grades,” said Lapidus, head of senior school at Head-Royce High School. “He's a deeply empathetic person and that's how he approaches school: How can I learn more to understand others better? What sets him apart for a university is a combination of his brain , of course, but also of his joy and his desire to explore new things.

He used his father's words against him

Helms has spent the last few months studying the websites and social media accounts of schools that have accepted him.

He watched videos of their music shows on YouTube and TikTok to get a feel for where he fit in. And most importantly, he had frank conversations with his father about the realities of a career in music.

“As an immigrant parent, I wondered, 'How are you going to pay your bills?' “But he is a motivated child… and he used my words against me,” Ategeka said.

Through this process, Ategeka says he realized he was viewing his son's college quest through what he describes as an “African immigrant mentality” that prioritizes certain lucrative careers as markers of success.

“I always tell him he can be whatever he wants and he can do whatever he wants. And he was like, 'Yeah, that's what I really want to do.'”

Ategeka says he slowly realized his son's dream of studying music and becoming a pop singer. He says he still worries about his future, because he knows how difficult it is to become famous enough to make a living from your talent.

But he admires Helms' determination and focus, just like his mother in Uganda. Chris Ategeka says his son proved he was serious about a music career by being accepted into numerous universities.

“He really highlights the idea that he’s not a kid who’s failing school or running away from home to live in the metro to make music work,” Ategeka said.

“He sent the message: 'I know I'm smart. I got good grades. I can get into college. I can do whatever I want. But this is my passion, this is my motivation is what I chose.' “

His choice of university has a link with his father

After months of searching, Helms made his choice: He would stay nearby and study music at his father's alma mater, UC Berkeley. A Berkeley spokesperson confirmed he was accepted.

“I created a spreadsheet, wrote down the pros and cons of each of the schools, and really tried to weigh my priorities,” he says. “If I want to be close to home, what kind of program each school has or doesn’t have, that kind of thing.”

Watching videos of school concerts and other musical events on social media revealed the quality and diversity of the programs offered, which helped him make his decision, he said. Videos of music events in Berkeley exuded a certain joie de vivre, he said, that helped him identify with them. The school also offers a wide variety of music programs, including African music ensembles and a brass quintet.

As an immigrant, Helms is part of a growing demographic. Children born abroad or in the United States to an immigrant parent accounted for 58% of the nation's increase in college enrollment between 2000 and 2018, according to a study by the Migration Policy Institute. “The face of higher education in the United States is changing,” the study says. “Students are more likely to come from immigrant families than in the past.”

Helms' new chapter comes at a precarious time for American colleges and universities as Berkeley and other schools grapple with the fallout from pro-Palestinian student protests that have led to disruptions, arrests and debates over limits of freedom of expression.

But Ategeka says his son's journey has reminded him to be open to new possibilities and ways of thinking. He believes Helms will find appropriate ways to participate in difficult conversations on campus.

“College is not about conforming to the status quo…it is the starting point for developing the leaders who shape the future. It is in college that young minds rethink the old and build the new for humanity and our planet,” he says.

Helms is excited to follow in his father's footsteps at Berkeley, where the admission rate is about 12 percent. Of the nearly 126,000 students who applied in fall 2023, only about 15,000 were accepted.

But more importantly, he says, he can't wait to take the next step toward becoming a professional musician.

The-CNN-Wire

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