Mark Leschinsky, Data Scientist and Scholarship Winner

Real-World Change

In 2014, Mark Leschinsky stepped up to stop the spread of the Ebola virus— a great feat, for a then-8-year-old from Hackensack, New Jersey. At age 10, he received a patent and recognition from the National Museum of Education for his creation: a self-disinfecting, reusable hazmat suit to protect healthcare providers across the globe.

Now, over a decade later, Leschinsky is a freshman at Stanford University studying data science. He is a recipient of over $50,000 in scholarship awards.

"What I really enjoyed about Scholarships.com in particular was the fact that all of these different awards are aggregated in an easy to use and easy to understand format."

“I’m studying data science,” said Leschinsky, “so I’m very excited about the intersection between different concepts: in computer science, in data, and in AI as well.” Inventing is, to Leschinsky, a practical matter; his goal is to make tangible differences in the way the world works.

“So many different real-world problems can be boiled down to a math problem, or a computer science problem, or a statistics problem,” Leschinsky explained. The construction of algorithms to solve these problems is, to him, the most efficient way to change the world. His undergraduate career at Stanford is the first step to getting there.

“One of the best things for me throughout the entire scholarship process was being able to have a better understanding of myself.”

A goal like Leschinsky’s isn’t an easy one to pursue. It takes effort and focus, both of which are too often sidelined among undergraduates in favor of working to pay for college. But Leschinsky foresaw this issue long before his enrollment; he took to a different avenue to pay for college.

“I knew from the beginning that I was always interested and excited to apply to different scholarships,” he said. “I started to first look at scholarships toward the end of my sophomore year [of high school.]”

To do so, Leschinsky used Scholarships.com’s personalized matching system and filtering tools to find opportunities that worked for him.

“What I really enjoyed about Scholarships.com in particular was the fact that all of these different awards are aggregated in an easy to use and easy to understand format,” said Leschinsky. “I’m able to look and see what the different types of scholarships are in different regions or in different focus areas, or of different monetary price ranges.”

"The scholarship application process really pushed me to think critically about who I am as a person, what I stand for, what I believe in. And that, more than anything else that I experienced in high school, really motivated me to shape my worldview.”

With the help of Scholarships.com, Leschinsky applied for and won enough scholarship money to fund his collegiate studies without the need to work at the same time. At Stanford, that ability to focus matters, and Leschinsky plans to make the most of it through the rest of his college career. Many of his awards will carry over to graduate school as well, further enhancing his educational freedom.

Regardless of the money, though, Leschinsky feels that the scholarship application process on its own is valuable. Pragmatic, determined students can, in Leschinsky’s eyes, use their applications to identify and refine their goals as people.

“One of the best things for me throughout the entire scholarship process was being able to have a better understanding of myself,” he said, “because the scholarship application process really pushed me to think critically about who I am as a person, what I stand for, what I believe in. And that, more than anything else that I experienced in high school, really motivated me to shape my worldview.”

“At the end of the day,” Leschinsky concluded, “the most important thing you can present to other people is who you are as a person— not only your background and lived experience, but also what you believe in, what you're motivated by, and what you aspire to do in the future.”