DOWNEY - Downey resident Venezia Garza has been named a semi-finalist for the Jack Kent Cooke College Scholarship.

After an extensive process of essays, interviews, and other required materials, Garza, 17, was selected as one of nearly 500 semi-finalists - narrowed down from over 5,800 applications nationwide - to potentially receive $40,000 in tuition and other college assistance.

“It was an interesting experience because…knowing that this was a national level, highly competitive scholarship, I knew I would have to step up my game and ensure that I was telling my story in the best way,” said Garza. “It took me a couple months of editing my essays to get them where they were when I submitted the application.”

“It’s been such a humbling experience because throughout my whole college application journey, I’ve encountered a lot of difficulties, obstacles, new experiences that I’ve never had to deal with before. Knowing that there are thousands of other students who are equally as talented – or even more talented and have more achievements than I do – knowing that they saw something in me, it makes me feel so blessed and so thankful that I have the opportunity to be where I am now.”

Garza is a senior at the Orange County School of the arts with aspirations of entering the medical field after college. She currently holds a 4.57 GPA and is involved in several extracurricular activities.

She describes herself as a “passionate dancer,” and was part founder of her school’s first coalition on anti-racism and inclusion.

She is also the founder of the Dare to Dream mentorship program.

“I recruited a couple of my peers to help me mentor other minority, low-income first-gen students who are freshmen and sophomores in high school and expose them to the opportunities that I had been exposed to…and just be that older figure that they can look up to and speak to,” said Garza. “I currently mentor eight young high school students, but in total our program has 32 mentees.”

“That has been an incredible experience in of itself.”

She is also in the process of creating an app that will combine her passions for caregiving and medicine and medical equality.

Garza has been admitted to five – California State University Los Angeles, Cal Poly Pomona, California State University Long Beach, University of California Riverside, and Washington University in St. Louis - of the 17 schools that she applied to so far.

She plans to study medicine.

“My grandma unfortunately was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 11 years ago, so that has sparked a really deep passion for medicine and neuroscience,” said Garza. “I hope to one day contribute to the research towards one day discovering the cure for Alzheimer’s disease alongside being a physician in low-income community hospitals.”

“That’s kind of a big, broad scope of what I hope to do in the future. If I were to be awarded the scholarship, I would definitely take advantage of every opportunity they give me to get one step closer to my goals.”