A Grade 12 student in Saint John has won an $80,000 scholarship to study at the University of New Brunswick.
Stephen White, who attends St. Malachy’s High School, was chosen to receive the Schulich Leader Scholarship.
“I learned in sometime early March, I had just gotten the email telling me. It was a surprise when it hit me because, at the time, I was expecting to open up the email and figure ‘oh an entrance scholarship’ and it ended up being the Schulich,” said White.
White has enrolled in the Bachelor of Computer Science program at UNB’s Fredericton campus.
He plans to go into software development or cybersecurity and use that experience to begin his own startup.
“Really, my passion started in Grade 8 when I got my first computer and was finally able to start downloading software so that I could start writing programs,” said White.
“I love the inventiveness in it and I was able to turn creativity that I had into programs on a computer and actually see it do something and I found that extremely interesting.”
Schulich Leader Scholarships are awarded annually to 100 students enrolled in a science, technology, engineering or math program at one of 20 universities across Canada.
White said the application process for the scholarship was very simple.
“There’s a couple of essay that you have to write, I call them essays but they’re 300 or 400-word questions. You fill those out, basically detailing who you are and what’s your situation financially, what do you like to do, what extracurricular activities do you take part in,” he said.
White is at least the second student in southern New Brunswick to be awarded the Schulich Leader Scholarship this year. Rylan Cloney, who attends St. Stephen High School, received $100,000 to attend Dalhousie University in Halifax, N.S., to study engineering.
