It's nearly evening on the last day the high school senior can receive the news. Since seventh grade, Aubrey Higginson has been a part of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation's Young Scholar Program, which every year picks another 50 students nationwide to receive extra resources and guidance. For Higginson, the program has led to an array of pursuits and made her eligible for a scholarship from the foundation. But the phone call hasn't come.
Higginson knows where she wants to attend: Carnegie Mellon University. She immediately felt at home during a campus visit. Going to school within driving distance of her family in Leesburg, Va., would be an added bonus. When she received the news she was accepted, she was thrilled. But wait. Even with a "generous" aid package, her family was in no position to cover the difference. She needed that scholarship.
To make matters more heartbreaking, one by one her friends were updating their Facebook status, proclaiming their lives are "complete" because they would be attending the colleges of their choice. Higginson could only wait. And cry. A realist, she was already thinking about options. Still, if only . . .
8 p.m. Nothing. But wait, there's a message that she somehow missed. It's from the foundation; the news is good. Higginson starts "bawling" and proudly posts on Facebook that she's going to Carnegie Mellon. Last fall, she joined the freshman class.
-Elizabeth Shestak (HS'03)
