A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League

Ron Suskind’s A Hope in the Unseen tells the story of Cedric Jennings’ last two years at Frank W. Ballou Senior High School in Washington, DC, and of his first year at Brown University. Ballou High School has a history of poor academic performance, poverty, and at-risk teens. When Cedric was a student there, just 80 of more than 1,350 students maintained a B average or better. In 2004/2005, 95% of students failed the state reading test, and 85% failed the state math test. Yet Cedric achieved acceptance into a prestigious summer program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) after his junior year and was later accepted at Brown University.