VALLEY : 5 Local Students Win $5,000 Scholarships

Five seniors graduating this month from San Fernando Valley high schools have received $5,000 scholarships from the MCI International Scholar Awards Program.

They are among 11 students chosen from more 1,000 applicants from Los Angeles public high schools. To qualify, they had to be fluent in two or more languages, be good students and have served their community.

The application included an essay portion, where the students answered one of three questions related to communication and global issues.

The scholarship, the first of its kind given by MCI, also is available to seniors in the New York City public high schools.

Winners are Santiago Lucero, North Hollywood High School; Cindy Young, Van Nuys High School; Bill Ress and Thomas Philip, Birmingham High School, and Karen Strauss, El Camino Real High School.

Lucero, a student in her school’s highly gifted magnet program, plans to study international relations at Amherst College in Massachusetts. She speaks English, German and Spanish.

Young, a student in the math and science magnet program at Van Nuys, will major in entrepreneurial management at Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. She is fluent in Mandarin, Taiwanese and English.

Ress, who is fluent in Spanish as well as English, plans to attend UC Berkeley and, later, Brown University.

Philip attended school in India for seven years and speaks Hindi, Malayalam, Bengali and English. He also will attend UC Berkeley and wants to teach engineering at a university.

Strauss will attend UCLA and is considering a career in communications. She speaks Hebrew and English.