Every year, several Gables seniors are nominated to participate in the Posse scholarship process. During this process, the Posse Foundation “identifies public high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential who may be overlooked by traditional college selection processes,” and awards them with a four-year full tuition scholarship to one of the program’s partner colleges and universities. Currently, students are in the final stage, or DAP 3, of this esteemed Posse process.

At the start of this year, there were 15 Gables nominees that engaged in the second step, DAP 2, to becoming a Posse Scholar. After many weeks of interviews, the Posse Foundation narrowed their large pool of applicants to a select few “finalists” who will continue to pursue the scholarship for the school they are paired with. From CGHS, ten students are among this elite group. Of these ten students, Camilo Bacca (Pomona College), Jose Balcazar (Davidson College), Monica De Varona (Davidson College), Victoria Fonseca (Pomona College), Robbyn Jimenez (Hamilton College), Logan Morris (Davidson College), Juliana Robles (Franklin & Marshall College) and Teague Scanlon (Pomona College) were alerted immediately of their success. Sydney Campagna (Hamilton College) and Valerie Montesino (Mount Holyoke College) were later called upon to continue the process as well.

However, Posse is not for everyone. De Varona and Fonseca realized this and recently declined their scholarship offers.

As for the rest of the finalists, they will need to fill out an application to their corresponding school. Then, in mid-December, a group interview will be conducted among all of the finalists for each school. An admission committee will be present at this crucial interview to handpick their Posse scholars.

“I feel confident about the future group interview and I’m preparing by not even thinking about it. I’m going into that interview as I would any other event because I have to be myself. I don’t want to take it too seriously because I’d probably mess up. The Posse people are always saying trust the process so I’ll do just that and be myself,” senior Robbyn Jimenez said.

Finalists will be notified in late December as to whether they will continue on to college as Posse Scholars. Congratulations to all 2014 Posse scholarship finalists!