Damian Biggs, a senior at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, has been selected as a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.
By being one of 70 high school seniors nationwide selected as a scholar, Biggs will receive the Cooke College Scholarship. The scholarship provides last-dollar funding up to $55,000 per year after all institutional aid to pursue a bachelor’s degree at any accredited undergraduate institution. The goal of the scholarship is to help students who have demonstrated exceptional academic ability, leadership and persistence avoid student debt, according to the foundation’s website.
Biggs said earning the scholarship will help him attend the University of Tulsa where plans to study electrical engineering with a minor in innovation and entrepreneurship.
“If someone asked me what outcome I hoped for the most at the beginning of my senior year, this is what it would have been,” Biggs said. “It’s still hard to believe that is real life, and I’m so excited to attend college now. I will always be deeply grateful for receiving this scholarship, and I plan on making full use of it to set myself for an amazing future.”
On the day Biggs found out that he had been selected as a Cooke Scholar, he said he was feeling a bit down. During his lunch break he decided to play video games in his room to relax before his calculus class scheduled for after lunch.
“I was about to start a new quest in my game when I heard my phone buzz and looked down at the email from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation,” Biggs said. “I opened it and immediately felt a surge of excitement as soon as I read the word ‘Congratulations.’ I couldn’t believe it. It felt like every single weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders in that instant. I had never cried tears of joy until reading that email.”
Biggs said he wants his story to inspire other people starting their college journey. He said he was determined to send out as many applications to selective scholarship programs as he could as well as many universities across the country.
“Being selected really showed me that all the hard work and persistence did pay off, and not only am I getting what I wanted from the start, but I hit the home run of scholarships,” Biggs said. “I want to be an example of something working out at the end of the day as long as you keep your head in the game.”