Eighteen-year-old Nathan C. is a special young man who says he “likes to overcome challenges” and succeed.

Nathan completed his high school education with a higher than 4.0 GPA while concurrently graduating from the Gadsden, Alabama, Job Corps’ culinary arts program, where he made a difficult battered fried shrimp recipe his signature dish.

Now his outstanding achievements have landed him an appointment to the prestigious United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, where only 1,300 out of every 10,000 applicants are accepted yearly. But as Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) told the Academy, “I believe Nathan possesses the maturity and determination necessary to succeed in his goal of becoming an officer in the United States Army.”

Nathan said Job Corps “made me buckle down and achieve success.”