“Congratulations!” shouted a room full of friends, family, and faculty yesterday as senior Anna Merkel walked into a meeting room in the counselor’s office. A grin immediately burst onto Merkel’s face. She was being surprised with the prestigious STAMPS scholarship from University of Missouri.

“I got invited to apply for it, they let me know that it was an option basically, and I was like wow, this is a really awesome scholarship,” said Merkel.

The STAMPS scholarship is an award given to students with outstanding grades, ACT scores, and who are otherwise exceptional. It gives them 4 years’ worth of money to cover everything to do with college: tuition, residence, books, and more. It also gives them $16,000 to be spent to enhance their intellectual and leadership skills. STAMPS Scholars are also enrolled in the Honors College.

“It just sounds like a fantastic opportunity,” said Karen Merkel, Anna’s mother, who has supported her through her high school experience and through the process of applying for this scholarship. “And the fact that knowing that her college will be paid for, it’s just such a benefit to us. We’ve been saving money since she was born but it’s just kind of a feeling of freedom of not having to worry about financing college.”

Preceding this accomplishment, however, was a lengthy application process.

“We had to write an essay about our goals and what made them a goal and what we were going to do to accomplish that,” Merkel said. “After that, they narrowed it to 25 or 26 [people] and we all went to Mizzou for on-site interviews for a weekend.”

There are only five available spaces for STAMPS scholars, out of hundreds who applied, and Merkel has claimed one of them with her extraordinary leadership & classroom work.

“Anna’s an only,” Merkel’s mother said to counselors after the surprise.

“Good thing,” remarked gifted counselor Lori Dameron. “Those would be some big footsteps to follow in.”