Willson wins full ride to UW

Hot Springs County High School senior Jean Luc Willson recently won a full-ride scholarship to the University of Wyoming (UW).

The university awards about 100 scholarships every year. As part of the application process, UW first looks at the student’s GPAs and ACT scores. Willson said they look for an ACT score around 32 and a GPA of about 3.9 or 3.8.

UW Admissions put the applicants in a selection pool where they then have to do essay questions for a second phase. The school then narrows down the applications into a smaller group, which leads to in-person interviews.

Based upon that, UW finally decides who gets the full-ride scholarship, which covers all the direct costs or costs of tuition and fees, including room and board.

Willson said, “It’s a really unique opportunity that only kids around the state, only a few applicants, get the pleasure of having.”

For Willson’s essay, he wrote two of them. They were about ‘Why he wanted to go to the university?’ and ‘What the scholarship would mean to you?’

Willson said, “I wrote about how I’ve had a strong connection to the university since I was young. We’ve gone to football games. We have season pass tickets every year. And both of my parents graduated from UW and so I brought all of that together into this essay. That meant a lot to me.” 

When Willson was selected to do an in-person interview, he said, “They had all the departments there to talk to us. We went in and they had faculty members from around the university interviewing us about things such as what we thought we could bring to the university and what our plans there were to be and all of that kind of the benefits not only to us but to the university as a whole. It was a really unique experience, an opportunity to meet the faculty members.”

Willson has declared a major, and said, “I’m going to look at political science and a minor in international studies. I’m looking at being a foreign diplomat and ambassador. I really love foreign politics and relationships.”

Regarding what his dream job would be in that field, Wilson said, “That would probably be in the State Department, being an ambassador to a European nation such as France and doing negotiations and just being part of that field.”

Willson said there are a couple of sources that made him become interested in foreign politics and international relations. Willson said, “One of them was speech in extemporaneous speaking. I have to know a lot about foreign events and politics, and that includes foreign events. That really grew my interest. I really loved reading about and studying those international relations and how politics work on a global scale. And then also the fact that my mother immigrated here, that I’ve always had a connection to Europe. And so that has pushed me to want to make an impact not only here in the United States but also over there. And so I have kind of grown this interest.”

Willson also has a background in stage performance and music and about whether he will continue those, Willson said, “I do hope they continue specifically with speech and debate. I am considering and I am hoping to be a part of the university’s forensics team. I do want to continue that career as well as for music, just continuing to be involved in that in some way, shape or form. And I do love performing and I think they are very therapeutic to me, kind of like a pastime to take my mind off of the rest of everything that’s going on in my life. And so I definitely am going to keep them around, although they might not be like a mainstay.”

Regarding his full-ride scholarship award, Willson added, “I think that as far as the trustees and just how a lot of these opportunities go, I think a lot more people would apply than you might initially think. When underclassmen are considering where they want to go for school and what they want to do, really do the research into what the opportunities are because I think even if you don’t think you should apply to it, it might surprise you to see where you can go with that.”