Betsy Casas, a 4.0 GPA student at Gardena High School in Los Angeles, is a finalist in the prestigious QuestBridge scholarship program. QuestBridge provides low income, high achieving students with full four year scholarships to leading colleges and universities of their choice. QuestBridge partner colleges include Ivy Leagues like Yale, Princeton and Stanford. Betsy is a former foster care youth who wants to pursue a degree in environmental science. Her top college choice is Stanford University and she will be the first in her family to go to college. According to QuestBridge, “Over 84% of high achieving low-income students don’t even apply to top colleges and 44% don’t go to college at all.”
For the past two years, Betsy has participated in the Women’s Leadership Project mentoring program, a feminist humanist civic engagement initiative that provides first generation young women of color with community leadership and public speaking opportunities while preparing them for college. In addition to QuestBridge, WLP alumni have received scholarships from the prestigious Posse Foundation and Horatio Alger Foundation. QuestBridge scholarship recipients are notified of their college admission status in December.
