DES MOINES, Iowa — Lincoln High School’s class of 2023 is on track to set a new record amount of money awarded to students through scholarships, almost $4 million.

Lincoln owes its success to programs like the College and Career Readiness Program and having a counselor dedicated to helping students fill out scholarship paperwork.

Julia Minnehan, the Post Secondary Counselor at Lincoln High School, said that restructuring their counseling staff has made a big difference.

“Lincoln is the only school at DMPS that does this so we restructured our counseling department so we have seven counselors. Six of them have an alpha split so they’re responsible for every single student, but I’m the post-secondary and I work with all the students and so everybody is getting that same level of support with scholarships and post-secondary planning and all of that. So I think having this role has been helpful for students so they’re able to have all of those services and it’s equitable for all of our seniors,” Minnehan said.

The counseling staff helps students in many ways when it comes to scholarships. Isabella, a Class of 2023 Student, said that counseling staff would send emails with a list of scholarships.

“There is actually a lot of support, especially in the counseling department where they always send out emails or they have this link where they have all the scholarship lists down. Especially for me when I was applying for it because I didn’t know which ones were available at all, what deadlines were there,” Isabella said.

Another Class of 2023 student, Madison Moro, said that teachers were also very supportive and encouraged all students to apply for scholarships.

“I feel like everyone in Lincoln does because our teachers are constantly asking us where we are at in the process, asking us how they can help us and making sure we are ready for post-secondary plans,” Moro said.