ETS Awards 7th Annual College Scholarship to Trenton High School Senior

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Princeton, N.J. (June 22, 2011) —

Miachaune McJunkins, a recent graduate from Trenton High School, has been selected as the recipient of the 2011 ETS-Trenton High School Scholarship. She was ranked first in her class of 95 graduating seniors. She will attend Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, in the fall.

McJunkins is the seventh Trenton High School student to benefit from the generous, four-year scholarship, which includes tuition and fees, housing, meals, books, some transportation, a computer, and a monthly stipend so she doesn’t have to work and is able to take advantage of activities that enrich and enhance the college experience.

At the scholarship awards ceremony on June 9, the students sprang to their feet and roared when McJunkins’s name was announced.

This year, students were asked to respond to the question, in no less than 500 words, "If you could emulate a person in history who would that be, and why?"

In her essay, she writes, "Ernest Young is the young man with the one quality that I seek to emulate and strive to be more like in my life."

Young was one of the first nine Black students to be enrolled in a racially segregated high school in Little Rock, Ark. in 1957. The nine students would be remembered as the "Little Rock Nine." Green was the first to graduate.

She discussed the innumerable challenges he faced — verbal and physical abuse and pressure to give up and wrote, "Despite all this, these students daily made their way

through the jeering crowds up the stairs of their school to sit next to students that despised them for no reason beyond skin color … to fight for the best education available."

Laurie Russell, Community Service Director in ETS's Social Investment Fund, announced the scholarship winner on June 9 at Trenton Central High School's Annual Awards Night.

"It was a huge thrill for me," says Russell. "It was obvious to me from the response of the other students that Miachaune was the best of the best in their class and they wished only the best future for her."

About ETS

At nonprofit ETS, we advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research. ETS serves individuals, educational institutions and government agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification, English language learning, and elementary, secondary and post-secondary education, as well as conducting education research, analysis and policy studies. Founded in 1947, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually — including the TOEFL® and TOEIC® tests, the GRE® tests and The Praxis Series™ assessments — in more than 180 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. www.ets.org