Three PHS grads head east on full-ride academic scholarships
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Polson High School graduates Katelyn Toland, Kave Forman-Webster, and Sierra Garcia will be heading to Yale, Duke, and Harvard universities, respectively.
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POLSON – It’s not necessarily unique for Polson High School graduates to earn full-ride scholarships to the East Coast. But this year, three of them did.
Emily Johnson, who has been a guidance counselor at PHS for 15 years, said it is common for the school to have one or two students head east to a prestigious university, but come fall Kave Forman-Webster, Sierra Garcia and Katelyn Toland will be heading to Duke, Harvard and Yale universities, respectively. All three earned full-ride academic scholarships.
Kave’s mother, Jenaya Forman, a teacher at Cherry Valley Elementary, said the students had to go through a “real rigorous process” that involved taking extensive Advanced Placement classes and writing essays. Kave wrote three essays, she said, and was one of around 35,000 applicants to Duke. Only some 3,500 were selected, she said. His scholarship is for $72,000 plus two round-trip airfares each year for the next four years.
Forman-Webster plans to major in electrical engineering, while Garcia plans to study statistics and music. Toland will major in psychology with plans for a master’s level degree, Johnson said.
More and more of the East Coast and highly-competitive schools are trying to diversify their student bodies and actively recruiting students in Montana, she said.
Harvard and Duke visit the Northwest every year, she said, noting that Forman-Webster and Garcia traveled to Missoula to meet representatives of those colleges. Toland applied to Yale through the QuestBridge scholarship program.
Betsy Wade, who has been a guidance counselor at PHS for two years, earned her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College. The Vermont native noted that a representative of the New Hampshire-based school came to western Montana last year. Other PHS grads currently attending Dartmouth include: Sheridan Russell, Daniel LaFranier and Claire Bick.
In addition, Erica Alfiero is attending Cornell University, and military academies also have a Montana connection with Carlton Sisler and Tel Motichka going to West Point and Nathan Young to the Air Force Academy.
Some others that have visited the state in recent years include: Stanford, George Washington, Pennsylvania and Carleton College, which is located south of the Twin Cities.
