Teen receives national scholarship from AT&T
Tanvi Bafna wasn’t expecting much when she applied for the AT&T OASIS college scholarship. The 18-year-old was a senior at American Heritage High School at the time and had already applied for a stack of others.
“I had continuously been receiving rejections from other scholarships,” Bafna said, despite her participation in her school’s pre-med program and membership in Rho Kappa — the social studies honor society, the Spanish Honor Society and National Honor Society.
But one day while watching TV, she was browsing through emails when a subject line caught her eye. “I quickly opened the email and had to read it through twice just to make sure,” Bafna said. She had won.
The AT&T OASIS scholarship — an acronym for the Organization of Asian Indians at AT&T, is a nationwide scholarship that was awarded to 26 recipients. Bafna is the only South Florida recipient. Therewere two additional Floridians to win the scholarship, both of whom live in Tampa.
With the help of this $1,000 scholarship, Bafna will attend the Unviersity of Miami this fall, as part of the college’ s Health Professions Mentor ship Program. She plans to study medicine, majoring in biochemistry and nutrition. The soon-to-be college freshman says her interest in health started in eighth grade, when she received an academic scholarship to attend American-Heritage.
“I instantly knew that I wanted to join their pre-medical profession track,” she said. “Throughout high school, I was enrolled in courses such as medical terminology, embryology, anatomy … and during senior year, I shadowed many physicians in the area through the program”
By the time she graduated, Bafna had completed over 100 medical internship hours and over 1,000 hours of community service.
“I am sincerely honored to be a recipient of this scholarship,” Bafna said. “Academic scholarships such as this reassure me that it’s possible to get through college with minimal debt.”
And though the scholar says her answer changes annually when you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up — for now, she has a focus. “Dermatology has caught my eye.”