Sophomore, Padua Franciscan High School
Shah’s parents, both doctors, warned her that medical school takes a lot of time, effort and money. But the 14-year-old is determined to make it a reality. A trip to Peru’s Sacred Valley and Chincha Province inspired her. Before her freshman year at Padua, she tagged along with her father and a group of Cleveland Clinic doctors and medical students to test the locals’ vision, hearing and overall health. She enrolled in Padua’s MedTrack program, which provides guest speakers and intensive internships, to get a sneak peak at what her future as a doctor might look like. Priorities check: In Peru, Shah saw firsthand how wealth affects access to health care. The comforts of their Chincha hotel made tests easier to administer compared with the hostel they stayed at in the poorer Sacred Valley. “It taught me a lot about certain qualities that are needed in health care,” she says, “team working, caring or giving basic access to health care, even in third-world countries.” Ready for anything: To prepare for her trip, Shah skipped the Fodor’s guide and took a global ethics class. She learned how to interact with people who might ask for supplies only to sell them for money later — a concept that surprised her initially. “Once I went there and I saw what kind of place they were living in and their lifestyle, it made a little bit more sense,” she says. Well-rounded: Shah won first place in the NEO Science and Engineering Fair as a seventh-grader at Incarnate Word Academy, but she has a soft spot for literature. When she was younger and landed herself in trouble, her parents would take her books away instead of her phone. She’s already caught up on the newest J.K. Rowling entry: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. “I like analyzing stories, thinking about why a character would do it,” she says. “Some books, it’s hard to put them down.” Culture club: Shah’s grown up in a home where American customs are intertwined with speaking Gujarati and celebrating Indian holidays. She’s played both Western and Indian classical violin. “I connect more to the Indian violin because it’s more my heritage,” she says. “I can listen to music that’s in my culture.”
