$100,000 Loran Award for Falls student
More than 5,000 students applied. Only 88 made it to the finals. Through it all, Niagara Falls teen Kylee Smith hoped to get the phone call that would change her life.
It came on a Sunday drive home from Toronto earlier this month: She was chosen as one of the 36 winners of this year’s Loran Awards. The prize is $100,000 to go towards summer internships, an annual living stipend and a matching tuition waver.
Smith, a Grade 12 student at Stamford Collegiate, was on her way home from four intense days in Toronto where the 88 finalists met the panel to choose this year’s recipients. Adding to the stress, it came at the end of exam week.
“I was really speechless when it happened, I didn’t know what to say,” she said, recalling the fateful phone call. “I just kept on thanking them. It was kind of the moment I realized my life would change for the better.”
Founded in 1988, the Loran Scholars Foundation is the first national group in Canada to reward undergraduates based on “academic achievement, extracurricular activity and leadership potential.”
The panel agreed Smith possessed all three qualities. She now joins a select group of 527 Loran Award alumni, including 22 Rhodes Scholars.
“I had to be extraverted, I couldn’t just be introverted,” she said. “But for the most part, Loran made me feel very welcome and comfortable. Everybody there was the same in a certain way. We were all anxious.”
Smith started high school at A.N. Myer before transferring to Stamford. She now has to choose where she’ll go next — University of Alberta or University of British Columbia.
She realizes the award won’t foot the entire bill — there is still tuition to pay — but the $100,000 will fund three separate internships, one of them overseas.
“It will essentially open the door for me, or creak it open, and then I go through that,” she said. “(Loran) will fund the experience for me and get me the connections I need.”