Novas arrived at Noble and Greenough School in Dedham as a seventhgrader caught between two worlds. The private school's pristine campus was just a few miles from her Roxbury home, but it seemed like a different country compared with her poor, predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhood.

At first, Novas felt out of place amid the privilege and wealth and felt guilty over leaving her neighborhood friends. And while she remains uneasy with sharp class disparities, she came to realize her background didn't have to hold her back.

"It took me a couple of years, but I eventually realized that I could have a big effect," she said. "A lot of students of color retreat into themselves and just talk to each other. That wasn't the approach I took."

As a student in the Boston public schools, Novas caught the eye of The Steppingstone Foundation, a nonprofit group that taps talented inner-city students to prepare them for top independent and public exam schools. Now, bound for Yale University in the fall after a stellar high school career, Novas has more than justified that confidence, her teachers and counselors say. Her college adviser and history teacher, Michael Denning , for example, said that when Novas speaks in class, she "frequently blows away her classmates, and her teachers, with the depth of her understanding."

Once she decided to make her presence felt, Novas jumped in with both feet with what she described as a "restless sense of purpose." She mentored middle school students, sang in the chorus and musicals, and participated in student government. But it was her work with the student multicultural association that left the deepest impact, she said, and proved the most rewarding.

Novas believed that issues of diversity were too often discussed solely in terms of race and ethnicity. She set out to "change the conversation," to celebrate instead the diversity of experiences, interests, and ideas among Noble's students.

"I wanted to look at diversity differently," she said. "Too many people see it as black or white, but it's more than that. For us to truly value and appreciate each other, we have to recognize our intrinsic differences." Her senior project, an ambitious compilation of personal essays and illustrations titled "The Stories We Tell," highlighted how students, regardless of their race or gender, see the world.

"We should value people for who they are, not who we presume they are," she said.

Novas, who moved here from the Dominican Republic when she was 5, will be the first in her family to attend college. When she learned she got gotten into Yale, she jumped up and down in a circle, with several family members joining in.

"A happy dance," the 18-year-old said with a smile. There she plans to study political philosophy and Latin-American history and culture with an eye toward working in public advocacy in the Dominican Republic. "It's so much of who I am," she said.

© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.