Three seniors named QuestBridge Scholars
Angie Gallegos Reyes of Young Women’s Leadership Academy, Nikol Garcia of Travis Early College High School, and Jose Luis Martinez of Edison High School have been named QuestBridge Scholars. This award puts these SAISD seniors among only 3 percent of high school seniors nationwide who were considered for the esteemed scholarships.
“Being named a QuestBridge Scholar feels like a dream, honestly,” said Edison’s Jose Luis. “It’s like if you would have told me this would have happened to me freshman year, and I would have called you crazy. People where I come from usually don’t get things like this.”
The QuestBridge National College Match program is a college and scholarship application process that helps outstanding low-income high school seniors gain admission and full, four-year scholarships to the nation’s most selective colleges.
The National College Match is a highly competitive process drawing applications from students across the country. The program selects students who have demonstrated a level of academic achievement that meets or exceeds the admissions standards of the program’s partner colleges and who have shown outstanding academic ability despite financial challenges.
“As a district, we promised our students we would help them get to and through college,” said Dr. Eduardo Sesatty, director of Postsecondary & College Access in the Office of Advanced Academics. “Opportunities like the QuestBridge National College Match have been historically absent for our students. Now, we get to prove what is possible about our SAISD students. They have the ability, the resilience, and the desire to achieve.”
After receiving a record high of 16,248 applicants this year, QuestBridge selected 6,507 finalists who were considered for the College Match Scholarship. Of these finalists, 1,044 exceptional students hailing from 47 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have been selected as this year’s College Match Scholarship Recipients. College Match Scholarship Recipients are admitted early to QuestBridge college partners with guaranteed, full four-year scholarships that are provided by the colleges and universities, ensuring these students and their families that an education at a top college can be affordable.
QuestBridge’s 40 college partners include top liberal arts colleges such as Amherst and Pomona and exceptional research universities such as Columbia, Duke, Rice, Stanford, and Yale.