Saints grad MIT-bound

Mt. Hood Community College has a lot of incredible students, but one that really stood out this year was Eddy Calel. A senior at Reynolds High school, he has also been taking classes at MHCC since his freshman year and is getting ready to go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in mechanical engineering.

“I was ahead for a long time in math in middle school and high school,” Calel said. Because Reynolds did not offer an AP Calculus class, he attended one at MHCC. In the following years, he attended even more classes at Mt. Hood, including history, government economics, and physics with calculus. Now, he will graduate this month from Reynolds while also earning an Associates of Science degree from MHCC, which he believes has prepared him for MIT.

As you may know, MIT, near the heart of Boston, is not an easy school to get into. It takes a tremendous amount of hard work and Calel definitely did his share. Besides both high school and college classes, he was competing in track and field (shot put, discus, javelin this year) with the Raiders high school team.

He noted the workload used to be a lot more difficult in his early high school years because he had a full high school schedule (eight classes his freshman year and seven classes his sophomore year). There were days that he had to choose staying home and studying over going out with friends.

However, Calel said, “That changed a little bit when we went into online school (because of COVID-19). It was about the same amount of work but there was more time to balance things out.

“For my junior year, there wasn’t really any extracurriculars that I did because of COVID-19 and this year, I tried to balance everything out – but sometimes, it just doesn’t work.”

In any case, throughout his school years Calel has maintained excellent grades. He currently has all As on his high school transcript, and As and only one B on his MHCC transcript.

Calel’s reasons for wanting to attend MIT are short and sweet. For one, the school makes the most sense for his mechanical engineering major. He added, “Another thing is that it’s on the East Coast so it’s completely different from here in Oregon. I kind of wanted to try something new.” With a Latino heritage, he also mentioned that the advocacy clubs for different ethnicities are something that he is interested in exploring at MIT, as well.

While Calel does not have his plans set for life after college, he does hope to find internships while attending MIT that focus on mechanical engineering or computer science and could lead to his potential career.