‘Talent is Everywhere, Opportunity is Not’

It was summer 2023 when high school senior Evan Ali received a letter in the mail inviting him to apply for a full college scholarship. He thought it was a scam.

“You don’t hear about these big full-ride scholarships out of nowhere,” the Los Angeles native says.

Ali and his mother asked around and discovered that the opportunity was, indeed, real. It came from national nonprofit QuestBridge, which connects high-achieving, low-income and/or first-generation high school seniors with partner colleges and universities. Chosen applicants are matched with the participating school best suited to them.

“I’m very grateful that I’m able to be here,” says Ali, who is now a member of Holy Cross’ class of 2028. “I feel like this alleviates the financial burden off my family’s shoulders.” Without the scholarship, he said lack of affordability would have severely limited his choice of schools.

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Evan Ali ’28, who hails from Los Angeles, has his sights set on medical school after Holy Cross.

The 2024-2025 academic year is the College’s second as a QuestBridge partner, having joined at the start of the 2022-2023 academic year as one of 52 schools and one of two Jesuit, Catholic institutions in the group.

“It’s an opportunity for some of the brightest students across the nation from low-income backgrounds to attend leading institutions,” says Cornell LeSane, vice president for enrollment management at Holy Cross.

“Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not"

Participating in financial aid programs such as QuestBridge is a matter of living the College’s mission, LeSane says: “We benefit from having these students. They’re bringing a myriad of backgrounds and perspectives to our community, as well.” It’s also an example of Holy Cross continuing to honor and live its Jesuit foundation, harkening back to 1548 in Messina, Sicily. At the time, town leaders asked the highly educated Jesuits to open a school for their sons. The Jesuits, who had no intention of founding schools, agreed, on one condition: that students of any means could attend.

“Since our founding as a Jesuit, Catholic institution, we have ensured that a Holy Cross education is accessible to high-achieving students from low-income families,” President Vincent D. Rougeau says. “These remarkable students enrich our community, and this partnership with QuestBridge offers a powerful alignment of Holy Cross’ core mission with contemporary action.”

Students who apply to QuestBridge experience several rounds of evaluation. Those named as finalists choose and apply to 15 partner schools in order of interest. Partner schools review the applications and students are offered a scholarship to the matched school ranked highest on their list.

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“As a first-gen college student, going to college is one thing, but graduating is another because that’s where the cycle is actually broken,” says Cortney Lima, senior associate director of admission for access and recruitment.

For the 2022-2023 academic year, 11 QuestBridge scholars enrolled at Holy Cross. The following academic year that number more than quadrupled, with 46 students, including Ali, studying on Mount St. James. 

This increase in QuestBridge scholars is a result of outreach efforts by the College’s enrollment team, including Cortney Lima, senior associate director of admission, and her colleagues, who have been traveling the country, speaking at schools and conferences over the past year.

A challenging aspect of admission is that the College can’t accept every applicant, Lima says, but she reminds herself that for those students who are accepted, “we’re going to change their lives.”

Shared experience

Lima understands how education can change the trajectory of a student’s life.

“I live a completely different life than my family and that’s because I had access to a college education,” says Lima, who is a first-generation American and a first-generation college graduate. Her parents worked in shoelace factories, having immigrated from the Azores in Portugal. 

She grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, attending one of the lowest-funded high schools in the state, one with a graduation rate below 40%. This provided her with a similar background to many QuestBridge applicants.

“I share a lot of lived experience with a QuestBridge scholar. Sometimes there is a negative connotation to being a low-income student — I’ve been there myself — but I remind them that being a first-gen student is my greatest strength,” Lima says.

Her grandmother can’t read and her mother didn’t go to college, but Lima now holds college and postgraduate degrees. “I am two generations removed from illiteracy, so I’ve seen how having that access to college has been so instrumental to [QuestBridge scholars],” she notes.

Access to education extends beyond a student and can also positively affect an entire family. Chemistry major Bryanna Kirha ’27 says that having her college tuition covered eases the financial burden on her parents, and through that, has provided greater opportunities for her younger brother. “He has more [options] when he graduates,” she says.

Joining a community

When she’s not traveling across the country meeting potential applicants, Lima ensures that incoming QuestBridge scholars feel supported upon arriving at Holy Cross. 

“There’s a stigma that admission is only for the outside world, that we just recruit and don’t work with students once they’re here,” she says, noting she makes a point of ensuring that students know they have a resource in her at any time.

With Holy Cross having welcomed its second cohort in fall 2024, new QuestBridge scholars can now draw on support from inaugural members, in addition to Lima.

“There’s a very tight-knit community among the QuestBridge students,” biology major Ajak Deng ’27 says. “We all look out for each other and study together. We’re in this together because of how we got here.”
“I like to check up on all the students,” adds Kirha, who is president of the College’s QuestBridge Student Group. 

Her main goal is that incoming QuestBridge students understand “they’re not going in alone,” she says. “That’s what makes it a really cool organization — the community aspect. I find it really interesting that all of the QuestBridge students have different, yet similar, backgrounds — so many stories that people can relate to and learn about.” 

As the group’s president, Kirha’s responsibilities include serving as a liaison between the Holy Cross students and the QuestBridge network as a whole, organizing events for the scholars and maintaining contact with other College departments, such as the Office of Justice, Equity, Belonging and Identity, and Academic Services and Learning Resources. In the fall, when high school students are applying, she participates in admission webinars.

Ali, who founded and participated in a number of clubs and groups throughout high school, has applied to join QuestBridge student leadership, as well.

“I want to promote the program since it’s a newer organization on the campus,” he says. “Since ours is the second official class that’s here, it’s important to give a sense of  ‘We’re here, too.’”

Tomorrow’s medical professionals 

For Deng, Holy Cross was at the top of his QuestBridge schools list. Having attended a Jesuit high school in Portland, Oregon, the connection was a major draw after a counselor mentioned that a former teacher of Deng’s was a Holy Cross alumnus. 

“I fell in love with the ideals, the education and the motto, just everything Holy Cross stands for,” Deng says. He hopes to attend medical school to become a cardiologist.

Scholars Kirha and Ali are also eyeing a medical career, a major reason why Holy Cross was on their list. Ali says he has wanted to become a doctor since he was 4 years old, when he accompanied his mother, a real estate agent, to an open house. The homeowner was an anesthesiologist. “I was very curious,” he recalls. “She explained, ‘I’m a sleep doctor and I help people get better.’”

While attracted to the high success rates of Holy Cross students applying to medical school, Ali admits that as someone who does not identify as Catholic, the College’s religious affiliation at first gave him pause. Having settled in, he now says he finds the College “very open” and identifies with its emphasis on service: “My mother taught me to give back to the community when I can and to be grateful for what I have.”

Kirha says she was also drawn by the College’s strong Health Professions Advising program. She had narrowed career paths down to architecture and medicine, making her decision in her junior year of high school, when a speaker at her church shared his experiences as a pediatrician.

“He talked about affecting a child’s life because they have so much life ahead of them,” she says. “It really inspired me and made me think this is something I want to do as well.” She now aims to be a pediatric surgeon.

Life-changing opportunities

Kirha calls QuestBridge “an unexpected blessing,” before which she hadn’t considered leaving her native Oklahoma. Deng says he would have been attending a community college or none at all — and they’re not the only ones.

“Researchers have estimated there are between 25,000 and 35,000 students who score in the top decile on the SAT or ACT and come from families in the bottom income quartile, but many don’t apply to top schools because they think they can’t afford them or don’t think they can get in,” LeSane notes.

This phenomenon is known as undermatching and is detrimental to educational success, according to Lima. When working as a college access counselor earlier in her career, she worked for a community-based organization that studied the success rates of students at community colleges. The organization found that undermatched students are less likely to graduate. 

“As a first-gen college student, going to college is one thing, but graduating is another because that’s where the cycle is actually broken,” Lima says.

Breaking that cycle is what motivates Deng, remembering his family back home — his grandparents, uncles and everyone he knows who didn’t get the chance he has: “That drives me every day to not ever take it for granted.”