Incoming Freshman Already a Junior Miss

When the fall semester rolls through and the Yard is once again filled with nervous freshman wandering around, making small talk about their summer vacations, one new student will have quite a story to tell.

“I basically just Googled ‘scholarship, talent’ and clicked on the first thing that came up,” said Nora Ali ’11.

A few months and $54,000 later, Ali was named the 2007 America’s Junior Miss, the winner of a national scholarship competition based on an interview, academics, fitness, self-expression and talent, according to the Junior Miss Web site.

Ali, who had never competed in any kind of pageant-related competition before, described the whole process as relatively low-stress, especially compared to the violin and piano contests she’s used to.

“I’ve been competing in music competitions all my life,” she said. “There was much less of a competitive atmosphere at Junior Miss.”

But Ali will soon transition to a more stressful life as she will have to balance her time in the fall between being a Harvard student and traveling to promote the “Be Your Best Self” program, run in conjunction with the Junior Miss competition. Ali will travel with the other Junior Miss finalists around the nation, helping to promote various areas of self-esteem among adolescents.

Fortunately for the incoming freshman, she has her older sister, Nicole Ali ’08, to help her through the hectic times.

“There are a lot of people at Harvard who come with amazing backgrounds,” Nicole said. “I think she’ll fit right in, because there are a lot of people who have public lives along with their Harvard student lives.”

She has also helped her younger sister pick out a few classes ahead of time in addition to helping her begin planning her schedule.

As she plans out her classes while traveling, though, Nora has already thought about how she’ll broach the subject of her achievement with her future classmates.

“I think I’ll call it a scholarship program instead of Junior Miss,” Nora said, “because that would sound more like a beauty pageant.”

Sopen B. Shah ’08, runner-up in the America’s Junior Miss 2004 competition, agreed that some Harvard students get the wrong idea when they hear about her participation in the contest.

“For me, this experience has shown that one can always break stereotypes,” Shah said. “People can’t be boxed into one image that a certain program made for them.”

For now, Nora will begin traveling with the Junior Miss group, promoting her particular platform of “Let’s get nerdy.”

“I want to make it cool to be a nerd,” Ali said. “Because I am one.”

While everything seems to have fallen her way in the last few months, the 50th America’s Junior Miss does have some worries about her immediate future.

“I hope my roommates are decent,” she said.

—Staff writer Nathan C. Strauss can be reached at strauss@fas.harvard.edu.