Los Alamos Phi Beta Kappa awards six regional scholarships
Six north-central New Mexico seniors each won $1,000 from Los Alamos Phi Beta Kappa, a boost worth about 8 percent of a public four-year tuition bill.
Six north-central New Mexico seniors each won $1,000 from the Los Alamos Phi Beta Kappa Association, a modest award that can still ease the first wave of college expenses. At the College Board’s 2025-26 average published tuition and fees for public four-year in-state students of $11,950, the scholarship covers about 8.4 percent of tuition alone, before books, fees, housing and meals are added.
The May 27 announcement marked the association’s fourth year of regional scholarships. The program began in 2023, when the group said it was partnering with area high schools outside Los Alamos County for the first time and awarded five $500 scholarships to students from Santa Fe High School, Capital High School and Santa Fe Indian School. In 2024, the association raised the awards to $1,000 apiece, and in 2025 it again gave five $1,000 scholarships as it continued reaching students beyond the county line.
A 2025 scholarship flyer said the awards are for high school seniors pursuing undergraduate study in liberal arts and sciences. It described the association’s mission as championing higher education, fostering freedom of thought and recognizing academic and personal excellence, while promoting access for historically under-represented groups in Northern New Mexico. The flyer said financial need is considered, the minimum GPA is 3.0, and SAT or ACT scores are not required.
The regional program has already backed students on clearly different paths. In 2023, Justin Mirabal planned to study wildlife and conservation ecology at New Mexico State University, Hailey Capitan headed to the University of Arizona for pre-nursing, and DeAngelina Archuleta planned Fort Lewis College and exercise science while also entering Army National Guard basic training. The association’s 2025 winners included Isabella Blair, headed to Fordham University to major in political science, Hyunoo Kim, bound for the U.S. Naval Academy, and Uxue Sansinena, who chose Columbia University and international relations. In Los Alamos County, where the LANL Foundation reported 163 scholarship recipients totaling nearly $1.2 million in 2026, Phi Beta Kappa’s donor-funded awards remain a smaller but highly targeted part of the broader college-access network, and the increase to six awards in 2026 shows the program still widening its reach.
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