At first, Sebastian Pintea didn’t want anyone to know he was planning to attend a community college.
While attending Santiago High School in Corona, community college was “heavily stigmatized,” Pintea recalled. There was this misconception that community college was for students who didn’t have the grades to get into a university, he said.
But after researching the price of tuition at some of his preferred universities, Pintea, 22, found the cost to be prohibitively expensive and made a last-minute decision to attend Santiago Canyon College.
Pintea was also swayed by the SCC representative at a high school college fair he attended.
After graduating from SCC in June 2023, Pintea was accepted at Stanford and is now proud to shout from the rooftops that beginning his journey in higher education at SCC was the best decision he could have made.
“First of all, it was the quality of teaching, for sure,” said Pintea, an only child, whose father and mother are from Romania and New York, respectively. “It was also that the small community gave me the ability to take advantage of the opportunities we had, especially within student government, and being able to finally, I guess for lack of better words, do something.”
Pintea was awarded multiple scholarships, including a $75,000 scholarship from Stanford, helping offset the cost of tuition.
At SCC, Pintea was actively involved in student government, serving as the commissioner of sustainability in his first year and commissioner of administration in his second year.
While commissioner of sustainability, Pintea planned various sustainability events, including Earth Week festivities in 2023.
He participated in the STEM Academy and was a member of Phi Theta Kappa, an international honor society that recognizes academic achievement among students at two-year colleges
Pintea also took advantage of other opportunities at SCC, including a trip to Washington, D.C., to speak with legislators about pertinent issues.
Pintea has been involved in various internships and research projects.
He said his experiences in high school and at SCC have unleashed a passion for exploring topics surrounding mental health and seeking answers to questions about human perception and thought.
“I got interested in mental health around freshman year of high school, though I wasn’t sure where I wanted to take it,” he said. “As I progressed throughout high school, my first idea was to major in psychology, but when it came time to apply … I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go into medicine. I didn’t think I’d be able to handle it.”
But after taking general chemistry and a calculus class in biology his first semester at SCC, he decided to declare pre-med. “ I thought, OK, I think this is something that might be feasible.”
Pintea said while he was at SCC, he was the only community college student to participate in the Biostatistics Epidemiology Summer Training Program at Columbia University, a program established to introduce undergraduates from underrepresented populations to biostatistics and cardiovascular and pulmonary disease research.
He is passionate about issues such as climate change and wants to help bridge the gaps between mental health, science and medicine. He envisions a future where he can make a significant impact in both medicine and environmental sustainability.
At Stanford, Pintea co-founded Project AWISH at Stanford Children’s Hospital, an initiative aimed at reducing hospital waste and promoting sustainable healthcare practices.
Pintea is studying for the Medical College Admission Test and plans to apply to medical schools.
He intends to graduate from Stanford in June 2026 and pursue an MD and Master of Public Health joint degree and eventually work in academic medicine, focusing on environmental health and sustainable health care systems.
Shortly after graduating from SCC, Pintea wrote on his LinkedIn profile:
“The day I graduated community college was the day that reaffirmed all those years of hard work and endless nights of extracurricular dedication. … Words cannot express how thankful I am for my peers, family, and SCC faculty for getting me where I am today; the lines “it takes a village to raise a child” stuck with me during commencement because it certainly took a village to support my aspirations.”