This post was written by SVSLI Scholar Dulce about her application experience of the program. 

The Scholars at SVSLI’s first fundraising event

About this time last year

I learned about SV-SLI and decided I wanted to apply.  At first it didn’t seem real that I could apply for a college scholarship program as a freshman.  But I filled out the application anyway.

The essay part of the application was tremendously stressing, but after many, many, many hours I was finally satisfied with it.  In the essay I wrote about my motivation for going to college and about my family’s support.  I also said I wanted to make my family proud by being the first in my family to graduate from college.  As part of the application process, I had to go through an interview, which was a very emotional process.  One of the questions I was asked was “What will your family think if you aren’t selected?” 

That question was easy to answer because my father had already said, “If you are not selected, there will be many more opportunities, so don’t worry.”  Then they asked what I would do if I was not selected.  That question was harder to answer.  I knew I would be sad, but I said, “I will not give up my dream of going to college.”

When I found out I was chosen to be a scholar in the program, I didn’t know what to feel because I had so many emotions inside of me. Through SV-SLI my friendships with both the other scholars and my mentor have strengthened me as a student as well as increased my motivation to work hard in school and take even more challenging classes to help me prepare for university work. Now that I am in the program, I look back and think that going through the hard application process was definitely worth it.