Hutto High School Senior Juan Serna has been selected a Questbridge Scholar for 2017 and is among a prestigious group of 918 students from a pool of nearly 16,000. As part of being a Questridge Scholar, Serna is admitted to Yale University on a full scholarship valued at $282,280 over four years.
QuestBridge recently released results of the 2017 National College Match (“College Match”), a national program that pairs high-achieving, low-income high school seniors with full scholarships to the nation’s top colleges. Students selected for the College Match are “matched” to one of QuestBridge’s highly selective college partners, which means they were admitted early with a guaranteed full, four-year scholarship, including tuition, room and board, and other expenses. In addition to Yale, QuestBridge’s college partners include top liberal arts colleges such as Amherst, Colby, Hamilton, Pomona, and Williams and exceptional research universities such as Brown, Columbia, Duke, UChicago, and Stanford.
"Thanks to the continuing support of our generous college partners, we have been able to encourage our applicants to dream big,” said Ana McCullough, Co-Founder and CEO of QuestBridge. "By eliminating the worry of the cost of education, high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds can reach confidently for their best college fit — the school of their dreams. We are thrilled to be able to connect such a large group of highly deserving students to outstanding educational opportunities."
The National College Match is a highly competitive process, and this year’s College Matches have impressive achievements. Academically, the 918 College Matches have an average unweighted GPA of 3.92. On standardized testing, the middle 50% received between 1350-1490 on the SAT and between 29-33 on the ACT. 95% rank in the top 10% of their class. The majority of these new QuestBridge Scholars — 76% — are also among the first generation in their families to attend a four-year U.S. college.
Juan excitedly shared the great news with his college counselors at Hutto HS, Ms. Blando and Mr. Schwausch and campus principal, Mr. Christian. He also thanked two teachers that provided his letters of recommendation, Ms. Hollingsworth and Ms. Santagata. Juan spent the summer prior to his senior year at Purdue University participating in their Summer Science Program in Biochemistry.
Serna was recently named a Commended Student in the 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. He qualified for commended status by scoring in the top 3% of the over 1.6 million students taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) in the fall of 2016.
He also has been named National Hispanic Scholar by the College Board. The criteria for recognition by the College Board as a National Hispanic Scholar is to score in the top 2.5% among Hispanic and Latino students taking the 2016 PSAT.