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Stephanie Ortiz
UT-Pan American
Stephanie Ortiz
Edinburg, TX
Freshman, Criminal Justice Major, at UT Pan American
Financial Sources
Job: Part-time home health care provider, Work-study
Financial Aid & Scholarships: Federal Pell Grant, TPEG
Stephanie's Story
Working 60 hours a week and raising a 3-year-old for some might be a difficult barrier to getting a college education, but for Stephanie Ortiz it was the motivation she needed to attend The University of Texas-Pan American and work toward her degree in criminal justice.
“I realized that I needed to come to college when I had my son and I knew that in order for me to be able to give him what he needed, I had to get a better education for him and myself,” she said.
The first in her family to go to college, Ortiz, a UTPA freshman, said she was concerned about how she was going to pay for school coming from a single-parent household.
“At first I thought that I wouldn’t be able to attend because I didn’t have money to pay for college, but then I learned that I qualified for financial aid,” she said.
Through UTPA’s Student Financial Services, Ortiz was awarded a federal Pell Grant, a Texas Public Education Grant, and a work-study opportunity which totaled more than $8,000 for the academic year. The financial assistance has covered all of her tuition and fees as well as books, helping relieve her worries about higher education costs.
“I was very lucky that financial aid did pay for all of my expenses for college,” Ortiz said. “Now I will be able to have a better future and opportunities because of my education.”
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