Sarah Steinmann of Flower Mound, a senior at Faith Christian School in Grapevine, was awarded a $10,000 scholarship from Nordstrom on Friday.
While Nordstrom gives out 80 such scholarships each year, Steinmann was the only applicant selected from the Southwest region to win the award.
Winners were selected based on the applications and essays they submitted along with counselor recommendations and a video-chat interview with members of the selection committee.
Representatives from Nordstrom Cares visited Steinmann’s school early Friday morning while all 75 seniors were in their first-period Bible class.
Steinmann did not know she had won the award until the Nordstrom representatives walked in. “I was super surprised,” she said, “because I thought I wouldn’t find out anything until October 31. This was so unexpected.”
In addition to $10,000 toward college expenses, Steinmann was also awarded a new MacBook Air.
Steinmann said she “will most likely attend [Texas] A&M,” where she was accepted last week into the College of Education and Human Development. “I think I want to be a teacher of some kind,” Steinmann said. She “felt extremely grateful to God,” and is “thankful, obviously, to my parents for being super awesome and supportive.”