Skylar Steudter – First Generation German-American College Student
“Do not Worry about Things you Cannot Control.”
Skylar was born in Miami Beach in April 1999 from German parents. A few months later, his mother returned to Germany and raised her only son as a single Mom in Solingen close to Düsseldorf. Skylar was good in high school; he enjoyed physics and social sciences. He wanted to study entrepreneurship at university but couldn’t find a program that really appealed to him. Still, he applied and was accepted for the Fall 2017 term to several German private universities.
Then he made a life-changing decision.
In October 2017, he flew to Miami on his own to visit several universities. He was a US citizen but hardly spoke English. Still, he decided to stay and applied to the University of Miami. While waiting for an answer, he declined the offers from the universities in Germany. This was a very risky decision at the time for him. However, it was worth it as he was admitted to UM.
Skylar is graduating in December with a BBA in Entrepreneurship from the Miami Herbert Business School. He loved every bit of it. He co-founded the U Start Entrepreneurship Club as a Freshman – which was unusual even by UM standards, did internships in Singapore in 2019, at Procter & Gamble in Germany in 2020, and at LinkedIn in California in 2021. He was offered a job as a Sales Associate at LinkedIn and will start in January 2022.
Skylar is graduating with a sizeable debt to his name. This does not scare him. It makes him proud: he graduates as a first-generation American to go to college; he mostly self-financed his education, housing, study abroad, etc; he plans to have his loans paid off by the end of his first year at LinkedIn; and most importantly, he will take his mother to Italy for her first winter vacation in 20 years.