California Family Finds Warm Welcome at Creighton

Apparently, the capital city of California is a hotbed of Creighton grads.

“There’s a huge Creighton community in Sacramento,” says Yashmita Malhotra, a Sacramento native and a Creighton University freshman on the cusp of experiencing her first Nebraska winter. “There are Creighton send-off parties and alumni events. The Catholic high school I attended linked us to Creighton and other Catholic and Jesuit colleges.”

All this Creightonness seems to have eluded Malhotra’s father, Vivek Malhotra, an engineer with Google who called the University’s retention office recently to express his happiness at how well his daughter is doing at Creighton and how kindly she has been received.

“We started looking for a good school for her a couple of years back,” Vivek says. “It was her choice to apply to Creighton. We didn’t know anything about the school, or about Omaha, Nebraska. It seems one of her counselors suggested she apply there.”

So, mom and dad accompanied their daughter on the 1,500-mile trip to Omaha in order to check out the campus.

“We had traveled to four or five other universities in a month, but the moment we arrived at Creighton it sort of jelled,” he says. “We saw the maturity of the environment, the resources that were available, the research possibilities, the location of the hospital close by, the structure of the honors program, they all jelled very well.

“Within a couple of days, the choice was very, very clear that this was the university for us.”

Vivek says his daughter plans to become a medical professional, probably a physician.

That would fit well with her talents as recognized during her junior year at the all-girls St. Francis High School in Sacramento, where she was selected as a delegate to the Congress of Future Medical Leaders held in in Massachusetts. She was nominated by Dr. Robert Darling, the medical director of the National Academy of Future Physicians and Medical Scientists, to represent California based on her academic achievement, leadership potential and determination to serve humanity in the field of medicine.

For her part, Yashmita joined her father in praising Creighton.

“I am happy here,” she says. “I felt it was a very easy transition in terms of settling down, making friends, and feeling part of the community. I like all my professors. They’re all very helpful. I feel like I have all the resources I need.

“I really like it. I’m really happy with my decision.”