Liz Murray's Long Road From the Bronx Streets to a Harvard Degree

Liz Murray grew up in the Bronx in the 1980s and 1990s. Both of her parents were addicted to drugs, and she has described a childhood of serious neglect, including stretches when she and her sister went without enough food.

By her teenage years she had stopped attending school regularly. She has said she had not been in a classroom consistently for years.

Her mother had AIDS and died in 1996. Around the same period, her father was evicted for not paying rent and moved into a shelter. Liz, still a teenager, was left largely on her own.

She has described sleeping on 24-hour subway trains, on park benches, and on friends' couches. Her mother's death, she later recalled, pushed her to start asking what her life could become if she changed course.

A friend told her about alternative high schools in New York City. She has said she was turned down by every school she first tried. Then, in 1997, she was accepted at Humanities Preparatory Academy, an alternative high school in New York City.

There she met Perry Weiner, an English teacher and the school's founder, who became a mentor. She has said he accepted her completely while holding her completely accountable. Still without a stable home, she took classes at night and on weekends and completed four years of high school in two, graduating in the spring of 1999.

She applied for a New York Times College Scholarship, which asked students to write about overcoming obstacles. According to a University at Buffalo account of her talk, she was one of five students chosen from about 3,000 applicants. The Harvard Crimson reported that the program also helped her in practical ways, including dental care and guidance through college applications.

She entered Harvard in the fall of 2000. Her story drew wide attention, and in 2002 filming began on a Lifetime movie about her life, "Homeless to Harvard," which was nominated for three Emmy Awards.

College did not go in a straight line. Her father was seriously ill, and she left Harvard more than once to care for him. In 2003 The Harvard Crimson reported that she was no longer enrolled, and quoted her saying it was hard to focus on academics while her father was dying.

That was not the end of her education. She later returned to Harvard and graduated in 2009 with a degree in psychology. In 2010 she published a memoir, "Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard," which became a New York Times best seller.

Liz Murray went on to work as a speaker and founded Manifest Trainings, a New York company that offers workshops, and she has continued her own studies. She speaks to students and educators about what helped her, and she is quick to credit others. "No one gets where they are going alone," she has said.

Her story is not a tidy one. It included grief, hunger, a long interruption, and help from a mentor, a school, a scholarship program, and friends. The degree came nine years after she first arrived at Harvard.