Kim Snodgrass, 22, of La Habra, is Harvard-bound in a month. She'll take along a suitcase full of clothes suitable for a Harvard graduate student.
ELLYN PAK, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

COSTA MESA She assumed the lunch would be casual, so she dressed the part.

Jeans. A blouse. Flip flops.

But the purpose of the meeting was anything but casual. Kim Snodgrass was hoping to convince a group of women to donate money toward her postgraduate education. The lunch could, in a very real way, change Snodgrass' life.

And she'd already changed so much. She'd survived life with a drug-abusing mother. She'd survived getting virtually no school as a young child. She'd survived – even thrived – the often difficult life that comes with growing up in the foster care system.