Single Parent and Army Veteran Earns His 6th College Degree

Nicholas Williams earned his finance degree from the Fowler College of Business in May of 2020. 

 

If San Diego State University was able to hold their in-person commencement ceremonies in the spring of 2020, Nicholas Williams would have walked across the stage to pick up his sixth college degree since 2017. Williams’ degree in finance from SDSU’s Fowler College of Business is his first bachelor’s degree after earning five associate’s degrees from Palomar College.

You don’t meet a college graduate with six college degrees every day, but Williams – a 41-year-old U.S. Army veteran and single parent – is not your typical college graduate.

Use-It-Or-Lose-It

When he first entered Palomar College in 2014, Williams wasn’t planning to get any degrees. “My G.I. Bill was a use-it-or-lose-it benefit that ended in 2019, so I started at Palomar just to take three classes to get a real estate license,” said Williams. “I don’t know how it happened, but, ultimately, I fell in love with going to college and I wanted to keep going after my first semester.”

Williams, a native of Fresno, California, enlisted in the Army in 2000 to provide for his then-wife and infant son. After leaving active duty in 2004, he and his family moved to San Diego County to be near his father, who had just relocated from Fresno. 

Wiliams served in the U.S. Army from 2000 - 2004.

After moving to Southern California, Williams soon found work, first as a local tire and service center retailer, then as an account executive for a home mortgage company, before moving back into the automotive retail industry. But the short time working in mortgage finance continued to fascinate him.

Realizing that he had to exercise his college tuition benefit from the federal government soon, Williams entered Palomar College with a career in real estate in mind. Before long, his first three classes turned into a whole semester of classes, which then turned into his first two associate’s degrees, one in real estate broker license preparation and the second in general studies (emphasis in math and science) in 2017. 

Getting Into SDSU

In 2018, he earned three more A.S. degrees in business-related topics and made up his mind to pursue a finance degree from SDSU.

“SDSU is crazy hard to get into,” said Williams. “I knew early on that SDSU was going to be the university I would transfer to and I knew I needed a very high GPA to get in.” In fact, when Williams (who finished Palomar with a 3.8 GPA) applied to attend the university to start in the fall of 2018, SDSU received 93,610 undergraduate applications, with 25,135 of those applications from transfer students. Approximately 20 percent of those transfer applications were accepted by SDSU.

Williams was among the 20 percent of accepted transfer students and he made the most of it. During his first semester, he took Business Administration 323 (Fundamentals of Finance) that was taught by Dr. Kamal Haddad, who chairs SDSU’s finance department. “The professor expected a lot from us, and I worked insanely hard in this class,” recalled Williams.

Haddad recognized Williams’ efforts and introduced him to a fellow finance professor, Dr. Ed Pierzak, who heads up The Corky McMillin Center for Real Estate at SDSU. Williams became a student researcher for Dr. Pierzak, giving him an even better understanding of the real estate finance industry. “Nicholas’ diligence and initiative were very much appreciated,” noted Pierzak. “During his time at SDSU, he was also the recipient of a number of scholarships including the Burnham Real Estate Services Scholarship and NAIOP Scholarship.” 

 Williams is ready for the next stage in his life as he seeks a career in finance or commercial real estate.

In fact, Williams was the recipient of a total of twelve scholarships - including four that were established specifically for U.S. military veterans. “I was able to get that many scholarships because I wrote a good cover letter and then asked the staff at the creative writing department at Palomar to fine tune it,” he said. “I used that same cover letter over and over but made adjustments for each scholarship application.” He said he also asked for help locating scholarships from campus resources like the Art and Joan Baron SDSU Veteran’s Center and the EOP offices (Office of Educational Opportunity Programs and Ethic Affairs) at both Palomar and SDSU. “I read every email I got from those organizations, because a lot of them contained scholarship information,” Williams reported.

“My Son is Extremely Proud of Me”

Now that he has his B.S. in finance, Williams is ready for the next stage in his life as he seeks a career in finance or commercial real estate. However, he noted that launching a new career was not his sole motivation for completing his bachelor’s degree. “My biggest motivation for going to college was learning to navigate through the system to help my son go through the process,” said Williams, whose son is now 21. “Being a full-time single parent and a full-time college student has had its unique challenges and my son is extremely proud of me for working hard to obtain my educational goals. Going to college at the same time my son went to high school was an experience I will remember forever.”