Illuminating futures: Scholarship helps high school students pay for college

Twenty-six high school students are the first to commit to UTRGV through the Luminary Scholarship, which covers tuition and mandatory fees for eligible undergraduate students entering the university.

“The UTRGV Luminary Scholarship program offers the brightest incoming college freshmen from all disciplines a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in an unparalleled learning environment,” according to its website. 

The scholarship program is made possible thanks to the $40 million gift to UTRGV from philanthropists MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett to improve student success and expand educational opportunities.

Griselda Castilla, UTRGV associate vice president for Strategic Enrollment, said this is a new program that not many colleges have.

“The Luminary Scholarship, it’s one-of-a-kind scholarship program,” Castilla said. “It’s a scholarship program that is available to new high school graduates and so we are getting ready to welcome our inaugural Luminary cohort for this Fall 2022.”

She said the purpose of this program is to help students pay for their undergraduate career. It covers tuition and mandatory fees along with two years of room and board. 

“The beauty of it is that once a student receives their bachelor’s degree, and they decide to go on to a graduate program, then we will cover their bachelor’s and their master’s,” Castilla said. “So, essentially, we could have a student coming in and graduate with a medical degree, debt free, and we guarantee that we will cover all of their expenses, depending on which path they want to follow, whether it’s a master’s track or to our medical school as well.”

Luminary Scholarship recipient Muhammad Noorani, a UTRGV Mathematics and Science Academy senior, said he is going to pursue degrees in economics and pre-medicine.

“I believe that having a different perspective in medicine is an important thing,” Noorani said. “So I wanted to do both in order to have different points of view on how the world works.”

The MSA senior said he is happy that his college education will be debt free. 

“I’m so excited about having funding for my entire undergraduate career,” Noorani said. “But even more than that, being able to pay for medical [and] having tuition for medical school fully paid off is amazing, because medical school is really expensive.”

He said he is ready to start his journey at UTRGV.

“I’m really excited to just interact with the students and the professors,” Noorani said. “Maybe get into some research as I go through my medical route as well and overall just have a fun time while in university.”

The award amount will vary depending on which track the students decide to follow.

“So students can either choose to, of course, get their undergraduate and go on to master’s and right now, based on current costs, we are estimating that the scholarship is about $75,000,” Castilla said. “Now, if they choose [and] if they do get admitted into our medical school … then that can potentially be up to $137,000.”

She said one of the purposes of the scholarship program is for students to stay here.

“So, we want to try to retain that talent here in the Rio Grande Valley,” Castilla said. “We want our students to stay here at UTRGV. There is a pledge as part of the program where the students commit to staying employed in the Rio Grande Valley, depending on the number of graduate school years that we covered.”

She said that UTRGV received about 500 applications for the scholarship program.

“From that applicant pool, then we selected candidates to go to a second round, which was in-person interviews,” Castilla said. “[Students] have to be new high school students coming in. They had to submit an application. They had to submit an essay, their resume and answer a couple of short questions that we provided to them.” 

Asked how many students will be awarded the scholarship per year, Castilla replied, “We are estimating that it will cover around 25 students per year because, like I mentioned, we need to make sure that we have the funding to cover them for not just their undergrad, but also their master’s or their medical school.”

Luminary Scholarship recipient Daniela Salinas De Alba, a UTRGV Mathematics and Science Academy senior, said she plans to become a doctor.

“When I was a little girl, I was diagnosed with a cyst in my brain,” De Alba said. “Thankfully, it was nothing too serious but I got to see how my neurologist worked to calm my parents and that really stuck with me.”

She said she was cheerful to be one of the first 26 students to receive the Luminary Scholarship.

“I was just so happy,” De Alba said. “My parents were even happier, with my mom telling everyone who would listen. I’m most excited about … taking classes which are specifically catered to my major.”

Castilla said the application period for the scholarship opens Oct. 1 and ends Dec. 1.

“Applying for scholarships is work, but if you follow through … it’s worth the time and the effort,” she said. “So, we definitely try to encourage our students to follow through with a scholarship application and, definitely, this particular one, now that we have it as part of our application process.”