Cooke Foundation Awards 94 New Recipients the Nation’s Most Generous College Scholarship
LANSDOWNE, VA – The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation announces today its 2015 class of College Scholars, 94 of the brightest and most promising high school seniors from across the country who have unmet financial need. The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation College Scholarship Program is one of the most competitive programs in the nation, as well as the most generous. Each Cooke Scholar will receive up to $40,000 per year for four years of study at an accredited college or university, and automatically becomes eligible for a $50,000 per year Cooke Graduate Scholarship.
“The academic and extracurricular accomplishments this group has demonstrated are absolutely remarkable,” said Executive Director Harold O. Levy. “They exemplify the qualities the Cooke Foundation values: persistence, determination, a love of learning, and a desire to help others. We have high hopes for each Cooke Scholar, and we also commend all of the high-achieving students who applied.”
This year’s College Scholars boast impressive academic credentials: they have an average high school grade point average of 3.86 (on a 4.0 scale), excellent standardized test scores and strong teacher recommendations. Almost all have won academic awards during their high school careers and have participated in civic or community service.
Consistent with the Cooke Foundation’s goal of helping exceptionally promising students with financial need, all come from families with very modest means. The average family income for this year’s College Scholars is $33,168, and 41 percent will be the first in their families to attend college. They will be attending the most competitive colleges and universities in the nation such as Amherst College, Cornell University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Stanford University, and Yale University.
This year the Cooke Foundation received 1,814 qualified applications for the scholarship from all 50 states, two U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia. Forty-four of this year’s recipients are currently in the Cooke Foundation’s Young Scholars Program, while the remaining 50 were selected from a very competitive external pool of applicants from around the nation.
Fifty-seven percent of this year’s College Scholars came from the south; Florida and Texas were the states with the most scholars with nine each. Houston had five scholars, the most for any single city.
College Scholars were chosen based on their exceptional academic ability and achievement, unmet financial need, persistence, service to others, and leadership. An independent panel of college admissions officers selected students based on a careful review of their academic transcripts, standardized test scores, teacher recommendations, and self-assessments, and essays.
The following is a complete list of students selected for the 2015 Jack Kent Cooke Foundation College Scholarship Program, their current address and the colleges that they will be attending in the fall:
| Carolina Andrada (Panama City, FL) | Johns Hopkins University |
| Diana Andrade (Oklahoma City, OK) | Kenyon College |
| Michelle Arnold (Medford, NY) | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute |
| Jose Balcazar (Miami, FL) | Davidson College |
| Melanie Barrios (Playa Del Rey, CA) | Barnard College |
| Eric Baxley (Gaston, SC) | University of South Carolina Honors College |
| Lidwina Bell (Washington, DC) | Brown University |
| Hanna Berhane (Rockville, MD) | Princeton University |
| Isabella Berkley (Andover, MD) | Amherst College |
| Jared Bitz (Sioux Falls, SD) | Stanford University |
| Maxwell Blankenship (Shelby, NC) | North Carolina State University |
| Alex Frances Buranday (Nogales, AZ) | University of San Diego |
| Amanda Burcroff (Beverly Hills, MI) | University of Michigan |
| Iris Carbonel-Estepan (Brighton, MA) | New York University |
| Liam Carpenter-Urquhart (Tucson, AZ) | Brown University |
| Alexandra Carrington (Falmouth, ME) | Wellesley College |
| Siven Chinniah (Camp Hill, PA) | Temple University |
| Veronica Chiu (Lexington, SC) | Emory University, Oxford College |
| Roberto Claure (Arlington, VA) | University of Miami |
| Sheridan Clayborne (Highland Park, IL) | Northwestern University |
| Grace Creelman (Burlington, WA) | Whittier College |
| Nicholas Curtis (Fishers, IN) | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Victoria Davidjohn (Lynchburg, VA) | Princeton University |
| Tarek Deida (Pleasant Hill, NC) | Columbia University |
| Janet Diaz (Fort Worth, TX) | Stanford University |
| Katherine Diaz (Arlington, VA) | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Mayda Diaz (Houston, TX) | University of Pennsylvania |
| Gloria Ferry-Brennan (Langley, WA) | Curtis Institute of Music |
| Brittany Fischer (Palm Beach Gardens, FL) | University of Florida |
| Ashlyn Frahm (Montz, LA) | Harvard University |
| Alexus Fraser (Millington, TN) | Princeton University |
| Abagail Furry (Sanford, NC) | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill |
| Mitchell Gant (Stone Mountain, GA) | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Dawit Gebre (Lithonia, GA) | Stanford University |
| Julia Gensheimer (Bowling Green, KY) | Emory University |
| Nicholas Gonzales (Freeport, MI) | University of Chicago |
| Frances Mari Grimaldo (Orofino, ID) | University of Southern California, Berkeley |
| Briana Grubb (Carlsbad, CA) | University of Southern California |
| Isaac Guerrero (Brooklyn, NY) | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Nayely Gutierrez (Houston, TX) | University of Southern California |
| Helen Harrison (Woodstock, VA) | Guilford College |
| Nicholas Hartman (Tulsa, OK) | Duke University |
| Makayla Haussler (Lincoln, NE) | Yale University |
| Jocelyn Hernandez (San Antonio, TX) | Harvard University |
| Beatrice Hociota (Bellbrook, OH) | Georgetown University |
| Tashrima Hossain (Houston, TX) | Stanford University |
| Jesse Isenberg (Indiana, PA) | Penn State University, University Park |
| Emily Janis (Kyle, SD) | South Dakota State |
| Adhitya Jayasinghe (Irving, TX) | Lehigh University |
| Robert Kancans (White Bear Lake, MN) | University of Southern California |
| Kathryn Kasky (Belen, NM) | Baylor University |
| Kristy Kim (New Smyrna Beach, FL) | Yale University |
| Madeline Kroot (Bethel, CT) | Dartmouth College |
| Victor LaBozzetta (Selden, NY) | Eastman School of Music |
| Logan Lawrence (Arlington, TX) | Rice University |
| Kevin Le (Houston, TX) | University of Texas at Austin |
| Jesse Ledesma (Cockeysville, MD) | University of Maryland, College Park |
| Jacob Lisner (Newport, VT) | Princeton University |
| Xiangyang Liu (Los Angeles, CA) | Harvard University |
| Ravyn Malatesta (Silver Spring, MD) | Lewis & Clark College |
| Madelaine Maloney (Cashtown, PA) | New York University |
| Daven McQueen (Torrance, CA) | Brown University |
| Puneeth Meruva (Fort Wayne, IN) | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Khayln Miller (Dayton, OH) | Case Western Reserve University |
| Marina Mozak (Bath, ME) | Drew University |
| Patrizio Murdocca (Venice, FL) | Vanderbilt University |
| Minh Nguyen (Portland, OR) | Yale University |
| Colter Norick (Columbia Falls, MT) | Duke University |
| Samira Okudo (Gaithersburg, MD) | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Giselle Olivera (Staunton, VA) | Mary Baldwin College |
| Jean Carlo Pacheco (Kissimmee, FL) | University of Florida |
| Oscar Perales (Houston, TX) | Yale University |
| Magdalene Pizzo (Lakewood, OH) | Dartmouth College |
| Michael Riera (Newark, NJ) | Columbia University |
| Andreas Robertson (Silver Spring, MD) | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Jesus Rodriguez (Orlando, FL) | Georgetown University |
| Daniella Royer (Tulsa, OK) | University of Oklahoma |
| Emmanuel Sanchez (Green Bay, WI) | University of Minnesota |
| Paul Serrato (Winder, GA) | Stanford University |
| Dain Song (Sugar Hill, GA) | Yale University |
| Chelsea Southworth (Lexington, KY) | Duke University |
| Chuang Tang (Little Rock, AR) | Yale University |
| Katie Taylor (Monticello, AR) | Duke University |
| Courtney Thurston (Mechanicsburg, PA) | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University |
| Tho Tran (Annandale, VA) | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Enxin Wan (Herndon, VA) | Harvard University |
| Gary Wang (Winter Haven, FL) | Washington University in St. Louis |
| Xin Wen (Lawrence, MA) | Cornell University |
| Branden West (Pleasanton, CA) | University of Southern California, Berkeley |
| Christian Willick (Elm Grove, WI) | Martin Luther College |
| Auriel Wright (Macon, GA) | Harvard University |
| Yae Eun Yang (Brentwood, TN) | Johns Hopkins University |
| Natalie Zatz (Vero Beach, FL) | Yale University |
| Min Zhong (Arlington, VA) | Swarthmore College |
The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is dedicated to advancing the education of exceptionally promising students who have financial need. By offering the largest scholarships in the country, comprehensive counseling and other support services to students from 7th grade to graduate school, the Foundation is dedicated to ensuring high-performing, low-income students have the support necessary to develop their talents and excel educationally. In addition to its scholarship programs, the Foundation provides grants for innovative, high-impact initiatives that benefit such students. By doing so, the Cooke Foundation seeks to use its resources to end the Excellence Gap, the disparity between the number of low and high income students who reach the top levels of academic performance. Founded in 2000, the Foundation has awarded $130 million in scholarships to 1,900 students and over $80 million in grants. www.jkcf.org
###
.jpg){kind=logo}