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This article originally appeared on Entertainment Weekly.
How does one qualify for a college letter of recommendation from former First Lady Michelle Obama? “Hard work,” Yara Shahidi, who received such a letter, said on Jimmy Kimmel Live. “It’s been nice to be involved in her learning initiative.”
Kimmel asked the Black-ish star about the college application process on Monday night, though he joked, “How embarrassing is it gonna be if you don’t get in after you have a letter [from Obama]?”
“But you know what? I gotta tell you, I have another really cool letter from my AP Calc teacher,” Shahidi said. “I just want to brag, like, my AP Calc teacher wrote me a letter. That’s not easy.” She explained that scoring a teacher’s recommendation is “a process. You have to do well all year, so I’m actually very proud.”
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The actress, who plans to double major in sociology and African-American studies, notes how she and her character on Black-ish are the same age and “will be exploring a new environment” in college. “We’re going through this together and so we get to explore a new side of Zoey,” she said.
In case she doesn’t get into a better college than Zoey, Shahidi laughed, “I think there has to be an episode to just address it, where Yara comes back to talk to Zoey about it.”
Watch Shahidi in the clip above.