Scholarships Help Student Fund Medical School
Editor’s Note: The following is a feature from the USA Funds® 2006 annual report. USA Funds Education Access Report is highlighting the students, financial-aid administrators and education-lending professional featured in the annual report to highlight the ways in which USA Funds is a trusted partner in changing times. To access the full report online, you’ll need Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Kimberly Montez hopes one day to be a pediatrician whose patients come from underserved areas like the one where she was raised. In that role, she says, she could provide treatment for those who badly need it while serving as a role model for children who might think a career in medicine is beyond their reach.
Latino children, in particular, she says, need to know that going to college and achieving their dreams is possible.
“I think that having doctors representing the population is important,” Montez says. “I want to show them that, no matter where they’re from, what language they speak, or how much money their parents make, it’s possible to become a doctor.”
Montez, a second-year student at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, speaks from experience. The native of a Houston-area neighborhood whose population is largely Mexican-American, she says many of her family members and neighbors were uninsured. The family struggled to make ends meet. A first-generation college student and the only one of three children to receive a college degree, she notes that there are too few Latino students who, like her, graduated from high school and college and pursued medical school.
She received her undergraduate degree in classical civilization from Yale University in New Haven, Conn. To help pay for her postsecondary education, Montez has relied on financial aid — including a $1,500 renewable award through the USA Funds Access to Education Scholarships® program.
“Money’s always been an issue,” Montez says. “I’m so thankful for all the financial support that others have provided for me. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to pay every person and program back.”
The USA Funds Access to Education Scholarships program provides renewable scholarships worth $1,500 for full-time undergraduate, graduate and professional students, and half-time undergraduate students. The scholarships assist students in financial need, with a special emphasis on students who are members of ethnic-minority groups or are physically disabled, and those in the states in which USA Funds is the designated guarantor of federal education loans.
Through the national scholarship program, USA Funds awarded nearly $8.2 million to help 5,497 low-to-moderate-income students pay college expenses for the 2006-2007 academic year. USA Funds also helped students defray rising college costs in 2006 by providing $412,000 in scholarships to high-school seniors through its USA Funds Scholars program.
Preparing for a better future
For Montez, financial aid is a way to help fund a better future. She believes her involvement in the community also will prepare her for that future. After receiving her undergraduate degree, she spent two years with AmeriCorps, serving in the National Preparedness and Response Corps in Los Angeles. Her work included teaching first aid, cardiopulmonary resuscitation and disaster preparedness in the community. It also took her to Florida in the aftermath of hurricanes in 2004.
Today she is co-president of the Latino Medical Student Association. She also works as part of the Stanford University Minority Medical Alliance, through the admissions office, to help increase the number of minority and disadvantaged medical students on campus. Additionally, she manages a Stanford-student-run free clinic that provides acute medical care to underserved populations.
“I love school,” Montez says, “but what keeps me going is contact with the community. I don’t want to lose sight of why I’m in medicine. Working in the clinic and seeing people who are underinsured or homeless reminds me that this is why I want to do this.”