LA PUENTE, CA – APRIL 9, 2008 – Nogales High School student Grecia Gonzalez was honored by the California Scholarship Federation (CSF) as the recipient of the Seymour Award for her outstanding community service, leadership and scholastic achievements. The CSF Seymour Award recognizes 50 outstanding students from more than 1,000 CSF Chapters and approximately 100,000 CSF student members and includes a $2,500 scholarship. In addition to this award, this top scholar was just accepted to all 11 top universities she applied to (including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Cornell) – and was even invited to attend Cal Poly Pomona without applying. Always desiring to live back east, she has chosen to attend Harvard.
“We have never had a Seymour Scholar from Rowland Unified – this is quite an honor for Grecia and for our District,” said Gail Lindenberg, who is the Nogales CSF advisor along with Patricia Penrose. “She was up against some very tough competition from schools throughout Southern California and took the top honors. We are so proud of her!”
“The competition consisted of a group interview among the finalists for four hours and I won’t deny it, I was a little nervous!” explains Gonzalez. The distinguished panel of judges was from the state CSF executive board. The 10 finalists boasted a GPA average of 4.4 and Gonzalez exceeded the average with a 4.6 GPA.
Gonzalez is a full International Baccalaureate Diploma candidate, enrolled in both IB and AP courses, and is a National Merit Commended Scholar in her senior year.
Planning to study molecular biology and genetics at Harvard, when asked her career goal she replies, “I would love to regulate the population of jellyfish in the world.”
Photos of Grecia Gonzalez along with her IB classmates and CSF Advisor/teacher Gail Lindenberg.