 "Photo: Conner Howell")
Two Wesleyan students have a decade’s worth of scholarship money.
“When I transferred here from Texas A&M I didn’t have any problems as far as money,” said Rebekah Jordan, sophomore business administration major.
Jordan is a Gates Millennium Scholar. As a member of the program, Jordan receives a renewable scholarship that covers all of her educational expenses for 10 years.
Jordan said the Gates scholarship is a leadership award for minority students in their senior year of high school.
She said applying for the scholarship was an intense, time-consuming process.
“A lot of people thought it was a disadvantage because the application was so long,” Jordan said. “It was like 20 pages.”
But Jordan started working on her application – stuffing it full of transcripts, letters of recommendation and close to 22 pages of other material, including eight 1,000 word essays.
“I just had a determined mindset,” Jordan said, “go to school debt-free.”
She finished and turned in her application in October 2006 and waited until the following May to hear back from the Gates program.
“I was nervous,” Jordan said. “I knew I had applied for a lot [of scholarships], but I knew this one was an important one because it would last so much longer than the others.”
Jordan was notified she had made it into the semifinal round in April but later received a formal letter in May stating she had won a scholarship from the Gates program.
“It was a great moment,” Jordan said. “I cried.”
Out of 12,000 applicants, Jordan was one of 1,000 students who received scholarships.
One other student among that number was Jose Ontiveros, junior biochemistry major, who came to Wesleyan his freshman year with a Gates scholarship in hand.
Aside from covering his tuition, the scholarship also pays for Ontiveros’ housing.
If it wasn’t for the scholarship Ontiveros said he wouldn’t have gone to school. The financial burden would have been too great for him and his parents.
“Us being low-income,” Ontiveros said, “we just didn’t have the money.”
Though student loans were an option, Ontiveros said he wanted to avoid money he’d have to pay back.
“You wanted something for free if you could [get it],” he said, ”and knowing that 10 years of college is paid for, you can’t beat that.”
But Ontiveros said getting the scholarship wasn’t an easy process.
“It was very difficult because I just didn’t know where to start,” he said.
But once he had begun the paperwork, Ontiveros said he remembered one essay in particular that he wanted to write for his application.
Ontiveros wrote about living with a disability.
“I just talked about my struggles in life,” he said, “and how I got around them and how it’s made me a better person.”
Ontiveros has cerebral palsy and was diagnosed when he was 3 years old and was told he would be unable to walk.
“But that’s not the case seeing as I can walk,” Ontiveros said.
Both Ontiveros and Jordan have seven years left with their scholarships.
Jordan said the Gates program let’s you major in any field for an undergraduate study, but students can only major in specific fields for a master’s degree.
So she will finish with a bachelor’s degree in business, then seek a master’s in education.
Ontiveros said he’ll pursue his studies past a master’s into medical school.
He said he’ll have to take out loans for medical school but will use the Gates scholarship up until that point.
“I’m not gonna let that go so easy,” Ontiveros said.
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