The Questbridge Scholarship: Bridging the Gap Between Ambition and Affordability in Higher Education

The QuestBridge scholarship connects high-achieving students from low-income families to a vibrant community and transformative educational, career, and life possibilities that will propel them to lives of fulfillment, meaning, and purpose. QuestBridge has been an organization dedicated to providing opportunities for low-income students, regardless of race, geography, or academic interest, since its inception more than 30 years ago.

Eligibility for the Questbridge Scholarship

The following criteria must be fulfilled by a QuestBridge College Prep Scholar:

• Be a junior in high school.
• Either be a US citizen attending high school overseas or attend high school in the US.
• In the fall of their senior year, they want to submit an application for college.
• Show excellent academic achievement (mainly A’s and B’s in demanding courses).
• exhibited a need for money (usually with a family income below $65,000).

Furthermore, QuestBridge College Prep Scholars frequently have a lot of extracurricular activities and have received honors or recognition from their community or school. Additionally, a lot of them are the first members of their family to enroll in college. These are common among QuestBridge recipients, but they are not official requirements.

Requirement for the Questbridge Scholarship

Only 3,414 of the more than 13,000 applicants for the QuestBridge College Prep prize in 2022 were granted this prize. Given that QuestBridge is an exceptional scholarship for high school students, it is obvious that receiving one is no small accomplishment.

QuestBridge College Prep Scholarship applicants must be able to prove their need for money. In fact, more than 90% of kids come from families earning $65,000 or less a year.

High academic accomplishment is another requirement for applicants; 90% of winners placed in the top 10% of their class. Accordingly, the awardees’ average GPA was 3.93.

Although they are not necessary for the application, students may also submit their results from standardized tests to show their academic success.

How to Apply for the Questbridge Scholarship

You need to get in touch with the Office of Financial Aid at financialaidoffice@davidson.edu for more information on health insurance, work study details, outside scholarships, and eligibility to retain the award. Setting up a call with one of our financial aid agents is an additional choice.

About QuestBridge 

The Stanford Medical Youth Science Program was established in 1987 by Stanford University students Marc Lawrence and Michael McCullough as a way to reach out to eight low-income East Palo Alto teenagers who were considering a career in medicine.

As a result of this program, the Quest program—then known as the Stanford Youth Environmental Science Program (SYESP)—was eventually introduced in 1994 with a focus on Stanford.

Although they initially expanded to include Harvard University, this program ceased by 2002 as the focus reverted to Stanford. The software changed its name to QuestBridge around 2004. QuestBridge formed alliances with several institutions throughout the ensuing ten years.

To link “high school students with a full-ride offer of admission from one of its 45 partner universities,” QuestBridge’s mission statement was reported by the Columbia Daily Spectator in 2021. QuestBridge offers mentoring programs that make the admissions process, which typically benefits wealthy students, more accessible for low-income applicants.

The initiative targets students based on data from admissions tests and networks of guidance counselors in an effort to reach high-achieving students well before the usual January application deadlines.

Can we trust QuestBridge?

Inquiring about the legitimacy of high school scholarships is a regular practice. It is easy to observe the genuine and beneficial influence that the QuestBridge program has had on its finalists. The QuestBridge scholarship money is genuinely transformative.