Honors graduate heads to Wall Street firm

Friday, Jun. 06, 2014

HEBER CITY — Commitment, hard work and a generous donor have put a Saint Mary of the Assumption parishioner on the road to an MBA from an Ivy League college after a stellar undergraduate performance at the University of Utah. 

Stanford Escalante graduated cum laude from the University of Utah’s School of Business with an honors finance degree on May 1. He was one of five students in the School of Business honors program, and has already begun working for a Wall Street finance firm that accepts only 3 percent of applicants worldwide.

The path to success wasn’t easy for the young man, who three years ago registered for a full load, took no breaks between semesters and continued working full time as the office manager at IHC Hospital in Park City. 

It wasn’t until just before his graduation that the federal immigration law changed and the DREAM Act “gave me some relief and more legitimate grounding,” he said. 

Escalante immigrated to California with his mother when he was almost 2; they moved to Park City when he was 6. The family later moved to Heber City. He graduated from Wasatch High School in 2006. 

He then worked in construction for two years while trying to get legal status. His grade point average was a 4.0, but because he was undocumented, he did not qualify for a college scholarship. At 19 he suffered a back injury and realized he didn’t want to do manual labor the rest of his life, he said.

“I began saving my money to go to college at Utah Valley University,” he said. “From there I went to school full time, achieved a 4.0 while working two or three jobs also doing side jobs to put myself through college.” 

A donor heard about Escalante’s commitment and desire to be the first in his family to graduate from college, and “she very generously offered to pay 100 percent of my school,” he said. “It was incredible, but I insisted on paying for my own books even if it meant working full time and getting only a few hours of sleep each night.” 

Escalante was accepted into the University of Utah honors program and “at that point the hardest part of my life was over,” he said. “I didn’t have to stress about money and how I was going to pay for my tuition.”

Escalante was one of the first students to be accepted into the new honors think tank program, he said. “It was a great opportunity and difficult to get into because of the limited spots and the number of students applying.” 

Escalante described his feelings at the time of graduation as that of “being released from fear,” he said. “I had spent my entire life imprisoned by the fear of being deported. I was undocumented, so I lived every day caged, wondering if today was the day something was going to happen; was today the day I was going to be sent back to a country that I didn’t even know or had never seen. If that would have happened, I just don’t know how my life would have gone.”

Escalante felt gratitude for his donor, he said. “I hugged her and gave her my medal, my honors cord, and my stole for gratitude; I couldn’t have made it through college without her. I was chained to so much negativity and hopelessness, yet at the same time my donor believed in me and gave me confidence to move on in life.”

Obtaining a bachelor’s degree was a challenge, he said, but “God showed me that with my work ethic, my thesis was published through the university, I got a job with a Fortune 500 company, and all these challenges were a way for me to build my character and strength. Because of what I’ve lived through, I know that nothing is impossible.” 

Escalante plans to work two years, then return to school for a Master of Business Administration degree, then help other immigrant students, he said. “I’m not saying maybe; there is no doubt in my mind I will go to Harvard or Stanford,” he said. 

“My donor gave me who I am today, so my dream is to fund kids and put them through school and pay their legal fees, and do everything I need to help them succeed like it was done for me.”