Written By: Clara Gutman Argemí|
Edited By: Kevin Ladd|Updated: July 9, 2026
Isabelle Rivera, Aerospace Engineer, Planetary Scientist, and Scholarship Winner
The road less traveled
As soon as Isabelle Rivera turned 16 — the minimum age required to work as an Explainer at the National Air and
Space Museum in Washington, D.C. — she submitted her application, which she had prepared ahead of her birthday.
She got the job.
She credits scholarships for helping her make bold educational choices.
“Scholarships allow you to be more adventurous,” she said. “Double majoring is not easy, and it means that it may
take five years to complete all the requirements. But knowing that you are covered, and that you have the support,
is a good thing.”
“When it comes to college, money can be very defining of where you go, what you choose to do,” she said.
“I’m grateful that I go in-state, which is already saving a lot of money.”
Rivera is currently combining her interests as a Caltech summer undergraduate research fellow, where she works with a photonics team that’s
developing the technology to detect distant planets by reducing the brightness effect of starlight.
The rising college junior first learned what engineers could do
from her mother, an industrial engineer from Puerto Rico who works as a civil servant in D.C..
Her own interests within engineering began to emerge while watching popular science videos during the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Rivera was hooked by videos produced by Kurzgesagt — that’s German for “in a nutshell” — a scientific education
and entertainment platform. She was particularly inspired by their videos about finding life and building
infrastructure on other planets.
“This is just so cool … I wish I could do this,” she thought. “At some point, I was like, ‘you know what? I'm
only in high school. Why not try to get there and try to aim for it?’”
Taking a page out of Kurzgesagt's book, Rivera began explaining science to a young audience at the Air and Space
Museum.
“It's a real privilege to introduce people to those wow moments,” she said.
While working seven hours a week and juggling a full class schedule, she applied for colleges with strong
aerospace engineering programs. Her older sister, who is attending Johns Hopkins — an expensive option — shared
advice, and introduced her to Scholarships.com.
When college offers came in, Rivera’s choice was constrained by cost considerations.
She chose the University of Maryland over more expensive options like Purdue University because attending UMD would
allow her to remain close to family in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area, keep a job that she loved, and pay the lower
in-state tuition rate.
“When it comes to college, money can be very defining of where you go, what you choose to do,” she said. “I’m
grateful that I go in-state, which is already saving a lot of money.”
She has not had to take out student loans.
On campus, Rivera jumped right into engineering and astroscience
coursework. However, she quickly realized she was more interested in learning about
planets than other celestial bodies like stars and black holes.
So much so, in fact, that she wanted to major in planetary science in addition to engineering.
“What it really is … is looking for a place like Earth somewhere else,” she said of her interest in planetary
science. “I was telling my friends: ‘Oh, the rocks are whispering to me!’”
Adding the major would take at least five years, her academic advisor told her. Possibly more.
To fulfill the necessary course requirements, Rivera would have to take a full credit load each semester in
addition to summer and winter
courses, exceeding standard credit limits. Overloaded credits are charged at a higher rate.
“All of that costs money,” she said. “When I knew that I was going to have to do 5 years, you know, it’s a real
expense.”
She did not back down. Instead, she applied for third-party funding.
“Scholarships became really important for enabling me to pursue a less traditional path,” she said.
Rivera created a
free account with Scholarships.com and used the site to filter for awards for which she already qualified. She
created a spreadsheet where she kept track of applications.
She estimates she has submitted 70 applications since her freshman year of college, and has earned around $12,000
each year in scholarship funds.
With the support, she also threw herself into applying for research and internship opportunities in her fields of
interest.
The summer after her freshman year, she interned at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight
Center, doing scientific communications for the Habitable Worlds Observatory Team.
As part of that internship, she attended a conference where she met the principal investigator of the photonics
team at Caltech, who introduced her to the group’s post-doctoral fellows.
“Because of that, I emailed them, and they told me that they weren't staying on, but they let me know about some of
the other people,” she said.
That’s how she met the researcher who sponsored her proposal for Caltech’s SURF
program, and who is now mentoring her as she conducts her internship.
“It's definitely worth it to put yourself out there, even if you don't expect to get the scholarship, because
many of the ones I have actually gotten are not the ones that I thought were most in line with me,” she said.
“Give yourself a chance, because the more options you have, the better.”
She also emphasizes the importance of applying for scholarships for students who are interested in pursuing the
road less traveled.
“It really does change the way that you feel about your education when you're not as stressed out about the funds,”
she said. “It really enables much more specific and unique choices towards what you really love.”
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