Kenneth Ventress, a senior at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts, has been selected as a QuestBridge National College Match Scholarship recipient.
The QuestBridge National College Match program connects high-achieving high school seniors with low-income backgrounds with full four-year scholarships to the nation’s top colleges and universities. This year, 1,464 students nationwide were selected from more than 18,500 applicants to receive a Match Scholarship.
Ventress of Benton received a Match Scholarship from Bowdoin College, a small, prestigious private liberal arts institution in Brunswick, Maine. It has an acceptance rate of 10 percent, according to information from the U.S. Department of Education.
Match Scholarship recipients are admitted early to their educational institution with full four-year scholarships provided by the partner college or university, ensuring for these students and their families that an education at a top college can be affordable, according to a release from QuestBridge. That is definitely the case for Ventress, he said.
“Coming from a family of eight in a mixed household in Arkansas, college tuition was always a dread, especially for a first-generation college student,” Ventress said. “This scholarship helps with my expenses and facilitates my college studies despite the hardships at home.
“Engineering and language are my passion, so the fact that I have to focus on such a rigorous curriculum with a good scholarship allows me more leeway to venture into Chinese and German for my career.”
Ventress spent the 2019-2020 academic year studying in Germany through the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Program. He also earned an Arkansas Seal of Biliteracy, showing proficiency in English and French.
He said the support his family and ASMSA provided him were factors that led to him receiving a scholarship offer.
“Without a doubt, my parents and grandmother were my cheerleaders while I was in the field all throughout high school,” he said. “If it weren’t for their support while also attending ASMSA, I don’t know if I would have been able to do anything leading up to this moment. I saw to it that I was independent for most of what I did, but they helped anytime I absolutely had to have it.
“From my engineering project to my year abroad in Germany for a year, my family and ASMSA have both built a support system that allowed me to shoot for the stars and develop the last two years.”
Ventress said he was shocked and overwhelmed with joy when he learned he had received a match.
“I had no assumption that I was going to get it, so I was screaming when I saw the ‘Congratulations’ across my screen for a four-year free undergraduate education. I called my dad and all my family right away,” he said.
To learn more about the QuestBridge program, visit questbridge.org.