SAS Student Wins Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship

Santiago Tobar, a senior in the School for Advanced Studies at Wolfson Campus, was awarded the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Scholarship. He was one of 30 to 40 high school seniors in the country awarded $40,000 per year to complete their undergraduate degree.

Tobar, 18, is a Questbridge Scholar, a program that connects low-income, high-achieving students with top universities. He’ll start as a freshman at Columbia University this fall, majoring in political science. For his graduate studies, he plans to do corporate and constitutional law.

Columbia named him a John W. Kluge Scholar. Which will give him the opportunity to finance any study abroad or research he wishes to take part in. Only two percent of the incoming class receives this distinction.

“I think all of this comes from [the] mantra I have [had] with me since my freshman year: ‘Try to make the best out of every single opportunity presented to you,’” Tobar said.