Best in class: Riverwood graduate wins Gates Millenium scholarship

Riverwood International Charter School graduate Mariah Hinton is one of 1,000 2016 Gates Millennium Scholars, selected from an applicant pool of 53,000. She will attend Florida State University to study nursing and will receive a full scholarship plus mentoring, leadership training, travel and networking opportunities. Mariah began working on the application last summer and wrote eight essays as part of the final submission. She says her strategy was to pique the interest of evaluators by fashioning her responses as "narrative stories about triumphs and challenges" in her life.