Afghan scholar pursues her dreams at Cornell
Mursal Rahim MPA ’25 visited Cornell for the first time in October 2022. She met fellow Afghan students who left their country when the Taliban took control in fall 2021, and who were now attending the university. After her visit, she decided to apply for the MPA program in the Brooks School of Public Policy. She was attracted by the program’s concentration in human rights and social justice.
To Mursal’s surprise and delight, she was admitted and arrived on campus in August 2023, just shy of two years after she fled her home in Afghanistan and arrived in the US. When she looked around at her fellow MPA students, she realized what an enormous challenge she faced to keep up. She says that her first semester at Cornell was the most difficult.
“I cannot find the words to describe how hard the first semester was. I had microeconomics, I had statistics. I was lost. When the professor was talking, I had no idea what they were saying,” she says.
Mursal recorded all her lectures, translated them into Persian, and then back into English. She says that a one-page reading assignment took her 30 minutes. To complete her assignments, she stayed up all night. She remembers finishing just before dawn and walking out to Beebe Lake to watch the sun rise. Then she would go to class, turn in her assignment, and go home to sleep.
She reached out to her professors and her classmates for help, and they were happy to do so. Mursal knew that if she could survive her first semester, she could make it at Cornell. She ended the semester with all As and one B+. She aced her first year and is now enjoying elective classes in year two, focusing on human rights—her passion.
Mursal’s Cornell education is supported by the Brooks School. Cornell is making an investment in this inspiring young woman—a person who has spent her life running toward education and the power it gives her to improve the lives of others.
