How a Drake University scholarship became a life lesson for Halima Yahaya
When Halima Yahaya first saw an admission offer from Drake University in April 2025, she says she felt joy and relief. The offer came with a Presidential Scholarship, a prize she had chased since 2023, but she told BellaNaija the financial conditions tied to the visa process made the move impossible for now.
Halima told BellaNaija that by May 2025 she had completed admission requirements and was awaiting an I-20 form. Even with the scholarship, she said, her family still needed to show a remaining balance of US$33,000 on their bank statement to meet visa rules. The family could not produce that amount, and Halima said she deferred her admission.
She described the months that followed as a steep emotional decline. Halima told BellaNaija she withdrew from social life, stopped posting online and struggled with daily tasks. She said mornings became particularly hard and that she cried while going to and from her mother’s shop.
Journaling became a refuge, she said. Halima wrote that by November she began replying to messages again, and by December she started posting brief reflections on Instagram. She said her account grew from 55 followers when she returned online to 95 at the time she spoke to BellaNaija.
Family support remained central to her recovery. Halima told BellaNaija that her mother offered emotional steadiness and her father, who she described as a soldier, continued to encourage her ambitions. She said their support helped her accept that plans can change and that progress can be slow.
In January 2026, Halima said she enrolled in a culinary school. She described it as a safe space where she could relearn confidence by practising and making mistakes. Around the same period, she told BellaNaija she began applying to other colleges again and had recently received admission to Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania with a merit scholarship.
Halima framed the experience as a period of learning. She told BellaNaija she was no longer as lost as she had been and that she was rebuilding her life one step at a time.
This account is based on Halima Yahaya’s first-person recollection to BellaNaija.
Featured image: Picture Des Moines via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
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