Playing for the varsity soccer team, working 25 hours a week, and winning a full-ride scholarship for college may seem like a dream, but senior Oswaldo Baires-Mendez made this a reality after winning the Posse Scholarship this year.

The Posse Scholarship is a full tuition, four-year scholarship to one of five partner colleges. The University of Rochester selected Baires-Mendez to receive the scholarship with a four-year mentoring component. Fifteen hundred students competed in the Posse Scholarship Program for ten spots. Baires-Mendez learned about this program through college and career information coordinator Deborah Prochnow.

“All my hard work has paid off. I’m being recognized,” Baires-Mendez said. He added that time management and hard work are the keys to his success. “I have lots of stuff outside of school, so I have to do homework in between sometimes,” he added

“[When I had projects] I would ask my coach if I could stay after school and miss a practice. When I get my break time at work, I have to start doing my homework,” Baires-Mendez added. “[My family is] really proud, and I’ll be the first person in the family to go to college.”

Baires-Mendez is excited to go to the University of Rochester because “they have a really good engineering program” and he is planning to become an engineer. “I like to do hands-on activities and build… and invent new things and come together with other people and then mix our ideas to make something cool and unique,” Baires-Mendez said.

“Oswaldo is an outstanding student with excellent grades in the rigorous [International Baccalaureate Careers-related programme], is a varsity soccer player, and is an active member of the Minority Scholars Program,” Prochnow said. “He is an incredibly well-rounded student.”

“Oswaldo is a representative of what all of our students can achieve if they just put forth the effort. He is such an outstanding young man and a great example for our younger students,” Prochnow added. “It was a daunting process, and all of us, here in counseling, are so proud of Oswaldo and of this monumental achievement.”