Honors Scholarship Students Relish Exceptional Community
Rutgers–New Brunswick Honors College offers students academic and financial scholarship support.
Whether it is building a combat robot designed for intense battles or learning AI, Maria George’s studies at Rutgers University–New Brunswick are enriched by her Honors College experience.
“I think the Honors College has opened doors to so many different things for me and I’m really thankful for it,” says Maria, a sophomore studying electrical and computer engineering.
The Honors College supports her commitment in academics and extracurricular activities, says Maria, a recipient of the Dean’s Scholarship, which is funded by the generosity of donors. “That's what makes me feel confident in challenging myself and exploring all these different avenues, whether that's hardware engineering, software engineering, data science, or trying out for different internships, research opportunities.”
Students in the Honors College benefit from a deep network of support to help them enrich their academics, pursue opportunities, engage, and thrive, from the Honors College deans, faculty fellows, advisors, and staff, to community and one-to-one peer mentors.
Maria, who scored a 1570 on her SAT, says she was excited to work with four other Honors College engineering students to build combat robots, commonly referred to as BattleBots, which they enter in competition through the National Havoc Robot League. The combat robot placed in the top eight out of 80 robots in the February 7 event, and Maria and her team of second-year School of Engineering students, Shadi Shahat and Holly Rizzo, both mechanical engineering; William Daley, electrical engineering, and Daniel Baker, industrial and systems engineering, will move to the league’s Pro Tour event in May.
Maria also receives a scholarship from The Silver Family Foundation Innovation Fund for her work on robotics, so that she (and her team members, who also received awards) can both compete at the highest levels and build a pipeline for other Honors College students to follow. Honors College students often build pathways such as this and other co-curricular opportunities for fellow students, which is an extraordinary benefit within the Honors College community that encompasses Honors alumni, too.
"The Rutgers – New Brunswick Honors College awards scholarships to both recruit and then enrich and sustain the curricular and co-curricular success of some of the country's top students, like sisters Maria and Naomi George," says Dean J.D. Bowers. "We are proud to welcome students of such a high caliber to campus and our college, and we do everything possible to give them the support that they need so that they can thrive at Rutgers."
Dean’s Scholarships are awarded upon admission and enrollment in the Honors College and then are sustained by their schools, he says.
AI Fellow
Maria, who graduated from J.P. Stevens High School in Edison, New Jersey, applied to and was accepted to an AI fellowship called AI4ALL Ignite Incubator, where she studies AI machine learning, and data science. “I realized this is a field where not only can you use computer programming, but you can actually use a lot of math and statistics to derive insights from data,” she says. “And for me, personally, I like stuff like that. It challenges me, and it's like a puzzle, so I really enjoy it.”
Maria says she helped build a computer program that combines machine learning and AI to alert people to fraud or scams at online retailers.
In her free time, Maria is involved with Rutgers Blueprint, a club where she teaches students the fundamentals of backend software engineering. Maria also recently finished working on coding a five-stage pipeline CPU or central processing unit, which allows computers to understand and execute instructions or code.
Honors College ‘Go-getters’
The Honors College is full of “go-getters” who inspire her. “They're trying their best to build themselves up, advance their careers,” Maria says. “They're really hardworking people, and that encourages me to try to challenge myself and learn more.”
As a first-year student last year, she lived on the same floor with other honors students and attended the same classes. “We became close,” she says. “It made me feel like I had a community here at Rutgers that I belonged to.”
As a sophomore, Maria joined the Honors Programming Committee and helps plan cultural and community service programs for fellow Honors College students.
“Rutgers gives me a lot of avenues to help people,” she says. “I'm able to volunteer for community service initiatives, and I can also create my own and get other people involved.”
Rutgers has also helped Maria become more open-minded by teaching her how to interact with and appreciate people who are different from her, she says. “I think the advantage of going to a school like Rutgers is that you meet such a huge variety of people with different religions, political beliefs, and ethnicities,” she says.
Maria says she is interested in analyzing data, building machine learning models, and interpreting results. “Ultimately, I want to be a data scientist because it lets me combine my interests in math, technology, and critical thinking in a way that can very concretely impact businesses and organizations.”
Honors College Sisters
Maria’s younger sister, Naomi George, is a first-year student at the Honors College this year, studying economics. Attending the Honors College with her older sister is “reassuring,” she says. “I feel like it's very scary to come to a big school like Rutgers, especially if you don't know anybody. But luckily, obviously, I had my sister here, and so it made everything feel a lot homier and more peaceful.”
Naomi, who also receives the Dean’s Scholarship, says she appreciates the support and academic resources that the Honors College offers and that studying economics will help her reach her goal. “Ideally, I would want to work for a think tank that analyzes federal decisions or even government decisions like fiscal policy and use that research to really inform our future political decisions on the economy,” she says.
Maria is proud of being a Rutgers student. “I miss Rutgers a lot over the summer, and every time I drive on the Garden State Parkway, I'd pass these big red R signs, and I would just feel very proud,” she says.
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