More Arizona students from diverse backgrounds are nabbing this prestigious $130K college scholarship

Excerpt from "More Arizona students from diverse backgrounds are nabbing this prestigious $130K college scholarship"

PHOENIX - Phoenix high school senior Samantha Muñoz was at the gym during spring break when she found the email she had been searching for all day on her phone.

It was an email that would influence the rest of her life. The email was buried in her spam folder.  

"Congratulations!" it said in bold letters.

Muñoz didn't need to read further. She knew she had been picked for a Flinn Scholarship.

The merit-based Flinn Scholarship is one of the most prestigious, competitive and generous college scholarships in Arizona. 

Worth more than $130,000, the scholarship covers the entire cost of attending one of Arizona's three public universities, including tuition, fees, room and board, books and study abroad. 

Only about 20 top high school seniors a year are awarded the scholarship.

Muñoz is among a growing number of Latinos who have received Flinn Scholarships as efforts to recruit and select students from more racial, ethnic and economically diverse backgrounds have intensified in recent years.

She, and others like her, are reminders that Latino students are achieving at the highest academic levels at a time when the pandemic exposed inequities that disrupted learning in ways that disproportionately impacted Latinos, and exacerbated an achievement gap among the largest and fastest growing demographic group in Arizona. 

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