LONG BEACH Danny Duong of North Long Beach was wooed by some pretty notable universities this year.

The Jordan High School valedictorian received letters of acceptance from Harvard, Yale, MIT, UCLA, UC Irvine, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania. He was also accepted by a couple of decent U.K. schools Cam bridge and Oxford ring any bells?

But Duong's mind is made up: He'll be a Forty-Niner at Cal State Long Beach in the fall.

Credit the allure of CSULB's popular President's Scholars program, which offers full scholarships to the top high school valedictorians and National Merit scholars. Other schools could have cost Duong as much as $40,000 for the first year alone. Instead, he'll get a free ride along with 82 other gifted freshmen.

Duong, who says CSULB is "a fine campus,' downplays his prestigious list of suitors.

"It's not anything big,' he says. "It's just a list.'

CSULB is certainly pleased that Duong is staying close to home. While university President Bob Maxson has yet to personally meet the 18-year-old, he says he's impressed with Duong's resume and considers his enrollment a strong endorsement of the university.

"I have found that, with these high-achieving kids, you can't offer them enough money to go to school anywhere they don't think they're going to get a good education,' Maxson says.

During his years at Jordan, Duong earned a perfect 4.0 grade point average while participating in the junior ROTC and serving as editor of Stylus, the school's award-winning literary magazine.

Lessons in reading, writing and arithmetic came easy. Learning social skills, however, took a bit more effort.

Duong, who prefers to dress in black, says he isolated himself while focusing on academics during his first two years at Jordan, often to the point of alienating others. Classmates thought he was arrogant and discourteous. And, Duong says, they were probably right.

"I was pretty rude to people,' he admits.

Friend Lisette Sepulveda, 18, says she was on the receiving end of a few icy exchanges in the early days.

"You'd try and talk to him and he would just look at you and turn around,' she says, "and you'd be like, 'OK, he doesn't want to talk to you.''

But an 11th-grade history teacher by the name of David Coop helped coax Duong out of his self-imposed cocoon.

"He persuaded me to be more social,' Duong says. "He said, 'A lot of skills come through socializing be it leadership skills or just life skills in general.' '

At Cal State Long Beach, Duong should be a little more adept at making friends as he studies international business and creative writing.

And he may still make a few friends at Harvard. Duong says he'll likely go there for graduate school.