As most Wyoming students know, doing well academically in high school can lead to scholarship opportunities for college. The University of Wyoming Trustees Scholar Award goes to 101 students from the Wyoming area and is essentially a full-ride to UW. Six seniors from NC’s class of 2021 were chosen: Abigail Gruner, Gabriella Haigler, Colter Helm, Brynley LaChance, Maxwell Radosevich and Caleb Sundquist. These seniors succeeded academically all throughout high school and their work has been rewarded with this scholarship.

Brynley LaChance(12) explained the process for how she and the other Trustees scholars received this award. When talking to her, LaChance described how UW considers students for the award. The people at the University of Wyoming look at a student’s grades and ACT scores. LaChance said they look for students with GPAs as close to a 4.0 as possible and high ACT scores. This year the average ACT score for the Trustees Scholars was a 32 and the average GPA was 3.97. It is widely theorized that the higher a student’s ACT score, the lower a GPA they need to be considered for the award.

LaChance then explained that when UW selected the initial pool of candidates, they sent out an email telling students that had made it to the first round of the selection process for the UW Trustees Scholar award. This email also instructed students on what they needed to do for the second round of the selection process, the essay round. After the essay round, candidates were told if they made it to the third and final round of the selection process; the interview. After the interview process was over students anxiously awaited letters in the mail telling them if they received the full-ride scholarship or not.

Caleb Sundquist said when he found out he had been selected to complete the second round of the selection process he was pretty excited. Sundquist said, “That alone was pretty exciting in itself.’’ Sundquist had been through interview processes for scholarships before, so he wasn’t exactly nervous for this. However, Sundquist said what made it difficult or weird was that it was a virtual meeting with pre-recorded questions instead of a face-to-face interview with another person.

The Trustees Scholarship is the premier scholarship available to high school students in Wyoming, and it is available to any students who push themselves to succeed academically by keeping up their grades and studying for the ACT.