Known around the school as student council president, Fusion dancer, Miss Franklin, All Franklin Girl and one of the top ten students in her class, Moriah Momsen will continue her success in Dallas at Southern Methodist University. photo by Karina Soares

story by Ana Garcia

It is fourth period and somewhere between the understanding of vectors and the index of refraction, a 214-area code flashes on Moriah Momsen’s phone. Confusion settles on her face as she strays from the lesson, only to remember that call is coming from Dallas, where the prospect of a $250,000 scholarship to Southern Methodist University has finally been decided.

Still in school, Momsen waits until she gets a new voicemail and secretly listens to the words she has been waiting to hear.

“I’m one of 30 of the whole freshmen class at SMU that they deemed worthy to get the [Presidential] Scholarship, so I’m going to get opportunities in the way of professors and connections,” Momsen said. “It was also really nice because I wasn’t just a number with them.”

The Presidential Scholarship selects 90 semifinalists to attend a weekend in Dallas for an interview. From there, 30 applicants are selected and receive, among other benefits, full tuition for four years of undergraduate education, room and board and a year study abroad.

The interview portion consists of sitting in a room across a table from five judges: three professors, one current presidential scholar and an alumni presidential scholar. Beforehand, the semifinalists are asked to prepare five books and three topics to discuss.

“I picked Anne of Green Gables, Blue Sweater and just books that I really loved,” Momsen said. “One of them was Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree, an illustrated book, so I knew they were either going to hate me or love me because of it. I went in there and I was ready.”

However, Momsen was a little taken aback of the welcome she received.

“[One of the judges] had read all my essays and all [my letters of recommendation],” Momsen said. “He read my resumé through and all of them knew my life almost better than I [did].”

Prior to receiving her scholarship, Momsen suspected that SMU might be the school for her and placed it in her top five.

“I realized, the more and more I started researching SMU, it’s perfect for me because I want to be an engineer, and SMU engineers are much more on the management side,” Momsen said. “They know the technique, but they’re not well versed. They can’t go onto a NASA spaceship and fix that one thing, but they can go in and run the show.”

However, there was a moment in time where Momsen was still unsure of whether or not she wanted to commit to SMU.

“$250,000 is a lot of money, and I was on the second round of the wait list at Harvard, so I probably could have gotten in had I said I still wanted to,” Momsen said. “I was faced with this huge decision and I was thinking, ‘Do I tell them I still want to go to Harvard not?’ I [thought] about it and SMU is perfect for me because it’s closer to home and I love Dallas.”