“The Flinn Scholars who are in my cohort and the cohorts below me have really created a family, or ‘Flamily,’ as we like to call it. And I feel like I’ve always had someone to rely on.”

“I would not have been here today if I didn’t take a little bit of a leap of faith and have some trust in myself that the experiences that mattered so much to me—the people and communities that I was a part of and loved being around—whether I thought that they were worthy of the Flinn Scholarship, that didn’t matter because of how much they mattered to me.”

“I’d recommend for anybody applying, really just be yourself in an application.”

”There’s no one-size Flinn Scholar. Every Flinn Scholar comes from very different backgrounds and has very different passions throughout high school and very different experiences.“Get the application done first. If you do get the interview, then you can start preparing for that. I don’t think you need to psych yourself out too early.”

“It’s really nice to go into college with people that you already know.”

“Get the application done first. If you do get the interview, then you can start preparing for that. I don’t think you need to psych yourself out too early.”

“I wish I’d known about kind of all the doors that it opens up, all the opportunities.”

“The opportunity to be surrounded by so many individuals that have so many different diverse interests is really something unique and something that it’s really difficult to find anywhere else. And I don’t think I really understood what that would have meant for me and my journey and my education until I was actually put in that position.”

“You just have to be passionate about what you want to do.”

“It looks like a daunting application, but don’t take the application fully at face value. You use it as an opportunity to reflect about things that you’ve done and then the service that you’ve already committed during high school. Use it as an opportunity to reflect on what you’re passionate about, what you want to do here in Arizona. You don’t have to have a perfect GPA. You don’t have to have a stacked resume.”

“Everyone on the committee who is going to be reading your application is pro you.”

“Going into this process, I had this assumption that everyone on the committee who is going to be interviewing me, who’s going to be reading my application was really, really scary and strict. But now that I’ve gotten to know them all, they want you to succeed. They are doing this for the future of Arizona. They’re doing it for future generations. They want to invest in you and they want to see you succeed. So don’t be scared when you’re going through this process and doing the applications.”

“The biggest thing that was granted to me was more doors that were available for me to explore.”

“For example, the first year they offer, at least at U of A, they offer the Scholars the chance to get into research your first year and you get a mentor automatically. So, that’s a win-win. And just being able to step in into a lab especially, which can be a barrier for some people. But as a freshman, you can establish a relationship early on that can open the doors professionally.”