Amid college and scholarship applications, one senior- Grace McFarland- has had some exciting news! She was a semifinalist for the Boettcher Scholarship- a prestigious Colorado scholarship that gives its awardees $20,000 per year for four years. While she did not move on to be a finalist, how far she got highlights how exceptional of a student she is. She has also been accepted into many amazing colleges, such as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Colorado State University and Montana State University. She is still waiting to hear back from several prestigious universities, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whom she earned an interview with, and California Polytechnic State University.
The Boettcher Scholarship application was very intensive according to McFarland. She had to write multiple essays and in depth descriptions of the activities she’s been a part of, and, overall, the application took her many hours to fill out. While preparing for both the application and her interview, she found that the fact that she had already written essays for scholarship and college applications helped. She also did practice interviews with a representative from the Boettcher Foundation in preparation for her interview.
“For the interview, Mark from the Boettcher actually came here and like gave this speech, and he said that, if we wanted, he would offer mock interviews. So, I reached out to him and helped prep me for the interview,” McFarland said.
While directly preparing for her application helped, McFarland has been building her resume to become quite the impressive candidate for her whole high school career. She has taken many challenging, high level courses while being very involved with many activities. She plays soccer, does ski mountaineering, soccer coaches, referees, plays music and does art. McFarland has been musical for all of her high school and middle school career by playing flute in concert band. Currently, she is first chair flute in SHS’ concert band. During this time, she has participated and excelled in many exclusive honor bands; this year, she played flute in the Tri-Peaks League Honor Band and Western Colorado University’s All Colorado Honor Band’s Crimson Band. She has also been involved with art all throughout middle school and high school, and she is currently in AP Art.
“I love music because you really get to experiment with a lot of the notes and rhythms, and I really like art because it’s creative. So, I guess most of my extracurriculars are very creative– like in soccer, you always get to make a bunch of different decisions on the field,” she said.
While being accepted as a Boettcher semifinalist is undoubtedly a huge achievement, perhaps an even bigger accomplishment is the fact that McFarland got an interview with MIT. She thinks the interview went really well, and she describes it as having a normal conversation that is slightly directed towards colleges. She believes that the dedication she has shown with her extracurriculars, particularly soccer, helped her stand out as an applicant. As well as being a long time soccer player, she has recently become a head soccer coach for a girls soccer team, which she has thoroughly enjoyed.
“I really love getting to interact with a lot of kids and help them become better players and also have them have fun, and it’s really fun having fun with them as well,” McFarland said.
In college, McFarland is planning on studying environmental engineering or sustainable design, which she has been solidly interested in since the fourth grade because she wants to make a difference surrounding some of Earth’s global climate change and plastic pollution issues. Right now, even her artistic endeavors are influenced by her love of the environment as she decided to do her AP Art sustained investigation on plastic pollution and its impacts.
“Back in fourth grade, there was a presentation on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and it really moved me. And I was like ‘dang, I really want to change the world now,’ so I’ve been doing a bunch of research and a lot of my school projects have been centered on environmental impact,” McFarland said.
Her biggest advice to people applying for colleges and scholarships is to apply early because getting the applications over with is incredibly relieving. While McFarland is still unsure of where she is going to end up, everyone at SHS is sure she is going to do great things!
