Gates scholarship opens doors for seven county grads
Kendrick Kirk, graduating Arbor View High School senior, made it into Yale University but then came the hard part - paying for it.
"Yale doesn't come cheap," Kirk said at Thursday's Clark County School Board meeting, expressing a sentiment shared by many local winners of the Gates Millennium Scholarship, a full-ride scholarship good for any college, no matter the tuition rate.
The seven Clark County winners can even extend the scholarship, funded by a $1.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to graduate school if they enter certain fields in science, technology or education.
Yale tuition will be $32,500 for Kirk's freshman year. He plans to study engineering at the Connecticut university.
If it weren't for the scholarship, 16-year-old Yared Assefa would be paying $57,000 his first year at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University . He graduated from Rancho High School, which has an aviation magnet program, and plans to major in aerospace engineering before becoming an Air Force fighter pilot. He hopes to become an astronaut.
Only 1,000 students a year receive the scholarship. More than 16,000 students have been awarded one since the scholarship was established in 1999.
Daniel Dominguez, a graduate of the Las Vegas Academy of International Studies, Performing and Visual Arts, plans to enter California's Stanford University and focus on laying the foundation for a career in immigration law.
"I can now focus on school and not financing it," he said.
Fernando Rocha, a graduate of Canyon Springs High School, was equally "relieved" by the scholarship and can now pursue a law degree from Hofstra University in New York. Academics are the purpose of college, he emphasized.
"College is not about partying and finding girlfriends," he said, prompting a buzz from some audience members who disagreed. "That's a part of it," one person muttered.
The other local winners are:
■ Martin Torres, of Rancho High School, will attend the University of Utah for biology. He plans to enter dental school.
■ Brittany Davis, of Sunrise Mountain High School, will attend Spelman College in Georgia and major in education.
■ Briana Guillory of Andre Agassi College Preparatory School also received a Gates Millennium Scholarship but did not attend the meeting.
Contact reporter Trevon Milliard at
tmilliard@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279.
