Five hundred Hispanic high-school seniors from throughout the U.S. were awarded college scholarships as part of the National Hispanic Scholar Awards Program, the College Board announced last week.
The program, funded by a $2.1-million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will award 250 students scholarships of $1,500 each; 250 students will receive honorable mention awards of $150 each.
The program was established “out of concern over the relatively low number of Hispanics who enter college,” said Evelyn Davila, director of the program for the College Board. In 1980, she said, “of the more than one million Hispanics who graduated from high school, only 315,000 went on to college.”
Winners were chosen on the basis of overall academic achievement, including grade-point average, high-school records, sat scores, and other criteria such as personal qualities and community involvement.
Next year, some 350 scholarships of $1,500 and 350 honorable-mention awards of $100 will be presented; 500 scholarships of each type will be awarded in 1986.
