CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The deadline to apply for scholarships through the Del Mar College Foundation for the fall semester is Saturday, April 30 at midnight.
DMC has nearly 400 scholarships available to full-time and part-time students.
“Students can attend on a part time basis, and still receive scholarships. We also have a lot of non-traditional scholarships here at Del Mar,” said Elsie Odom, the scholarship coordinator for the DMC Foundation.
In order to qualify for a scholarship, a student must have a 2.0 GPA or GED equivalent, and be taking at least six credit hours.
If students receive financial aid, scholarships can be included in addition to those funds.
“If the student’s tuition is paid for by other means, students will also get the foundation scholarship given to them,” Odom said. “So, they can use it to put towards gas to get to and from school, they can use it for food, other things they need it for.”
The scholarships can be especially helpful for non-traditional students, like Denise Sudell, who returned to school in 2020 after more than 20 years away.
“I waited until after my kids had kind of grown up and been more independent,” she said. “My daughter started going to college, and that kind of motivated me to get back into school.”
Sudell is married and a mother of four, she said it was a concern of hers to be able to afford her tuition and her daughter’s tuition at the same time.
“It seemed a big obstacle to attend school and focus on school without having to think of, 'How am I going to pay for my classes,' things like that,” she said. “I also did receive some help through the state with financial aid, but it definitely would not have covered the gap in finances, so those scholarships did help a lot.”
Sudell said scholarships were a huge motivator for her in her pursuit of her degree.
“Not only did it help me, but it also motivated me, and told me that someone believes that I could do it, and they were putting their money on me and betting on me that I could reach my goal,” she said.
Sudell graduated from DMC in the winter, and is now taking classes at Texas Tech University. After receiving a degree from TTU, she hopes to go to law school.
