The Bill Gates Scholarship awards Stewart college tuition

Mira Costa senior Taya Stewart became one in a thousand when she was awarded the Bill Gates Millennium Scholarship on April 15. 

Stewart was one of 1,000 students who was awarded the annual Bill Gates Millennium Scholarship for the upcoming school year, which entails a full-ride scholarship to any school in the United States, through the students doctorate degree in any given subject. The scholarship is awarded as long as the student keeps his/her grades at a 3.3 GPA or above. According to The Gates Millennium Scholars Program website, the Gates Millennium Scholars Program works to promote an academic career for minority students. It began in 1999 with a $1.6 billion initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“I’m extremely honored to have been awarded the scholarship because not many people get it,” Stewart said. “Receiving the award showed me that all of my hard work finally would pay off, and the whole situation is still extraordinary and unreal.”

Stewart first heard about the scholarship through a colleague when she worked in the attendance office at Santiago High School in the summer of 2015. When she heard about the Bill Gates Millennium  Scholarship, she decided to put all of her effort into applying for it because of how large an opportunity it provided, she said.

“I’m very proud of Taya, mostly because she stuck to her game and stuck to what she believed in, which is to make a better life for herself,” Stewart’s mother, Deborah Singleton,  said.

The application process for the scholarship includes nine essays, each a page to a page and a half, single-spaced. Once considered a finalist,  Stewart was informed via email on March 15 that she needed to send in additional documents such as transcripts and school records.

“The best feeling might have been when I found out I was a finalist,” Stewart said. “It hadn’t hit me that there was an actual possibility for me to win, and that’s also when I realized what a big deal it was.”

Throughout high school, Stewart has been involved in Costa’s Key Club, which is a community service group, and the Pink Ribbon Club, which is a club that creates care packages for breast cancer patients, in additional to playing the flute independently. Stewart also played one season of Costa lacrosse her freshman year and ran in two seasons of Costa cross country and four seasons of Costa track and field.

“The activities I have done and still do opened me up to many new experiences,” Stewart said. “These experiences made me the person that I am today.”

Stewart will be attending Pepperdine University in Malibu in the fall. She plans on double-majoring in accounting and Spanish and plans to continue with schooling until she receives her doctorate degree.

“To see my little girl pursuing her dreams and going after what she wants is just amazing,” Singleton said. “It makes me feel like I really did my job in raising a respectable, hard-working young woman.”

While Stewart plans to get undergraduate degrees in accounting and Spanish from Pepperdine, she hopes to graduate from the University of Southern California to receive her masters and doctorate degrees. Stewart aims to work as an accountant for KPMG, a service company that provides firms with audits, and tax and advisory systems.

“The whole situation is so extraordinary,” Stewart said. “I still can hardly believe it, to know that I was chosen out of so many people who applied for the same thing. I feel extremely honored, and I could never thank the program enough.”