The Blog

Swanson Wins Prestigious Scholarship

Trevor Swanson

Future college plans are nerve-wracking for any high school senior. From deciding which college to attend, to figuring out how to afford college, upper class students are under an extreme amount of stress and pressure. However, when a student is able to obtain a prestigious scholarship, a huge weight is lifted off of their shoulders.

One Nebraska Christian student has done just that. Recently, senior Trevor Swanson received the Wallace Scholarship from Wichita State University. This scholarship has an overall worth of $28,000 for four years, or $7,000 per year. Another asset of the scholarship is that it allows access to the student for internships that only the Wallace Scholarship can offer. Swanson applied for the Wallace Scholarship in late October of 2015. Less than one month later, in mid-November, Swanson competed in a scholarship competition held at Wichita State University in the student center with 150 other students. This competition included an essay and a team challenge. In the challenge, students worked in teams of four to build a tower as high as they could with twenty minutes preparation time prior to building, and then they only had forty seconds to assemble the tower. “Really, it wasn’t about the tower,” Swanson said. “They were watching us to see how we interacted with each other, and they walked around taking notes on each student.” Out of the 150 students who competed, 10 received the Wallace Scholarship. Trevor was one of them.

Although the scholarship is a huge boost in funds, Swanson is still torn about which college he will be attending. The two colleges that he is currently debating are Wichita State University and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Swanson stated that the scholarship made it somewhat more difficult to decide which school to attend, as the scholarship brings WSU tuition into the same range as UNL’s in-state tuition rate.

Even though future college plans have most students in a nervous tizzy, with genuine hard work and dedication, students can obtain numerous scholarships to help ease their financial burden. But God is the main source of comfort throughout these stressing times. He will always be near for the worried soon-to-be college student.