Lawrence and Lamont Flowers stand out in a crowd. Rail-thin and topping six feet, the identical twins share a shy streak and a strong bond that’s easy to spot.
At Henrico High School in the suburbs of Richmond, VA, they were polite, clean-cut Eagle Scouts making average grades. In short, they were performing far below their potential.
But something happened between then and now. in May, the Flowers brothers graduated with high honors from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) with bachelor’s degrees in their respective fields of biology and accounting. This fall, the 22-year-old twins will enter graduate programs at the University of Iowa (UI), a Big Ten school, where, they beat out nearly 30 other top candidates for full university-financed fellowships that will see them through their doctoral studies.
“They went from Cs in high school to magna cum laude in difficult fields,” said Dr. Quincy L. Moore, the Flowers’ academic adviser at VCU. “They recognized their own skills and decided the biggest competition was going to be against themselves.”
