Meet Our Students
Invest in Lives of Great Promise
Who your gift supports
Your gift to Berea College is an investment in lives of great promise, helping to fund the education of bright young minds from Appalachia and beyond.
Without donors, it’d just be me and my dream and major student debt. Because of your generous heart, I can help others heal.
Meet Aidan ’25, a Business major and president of Berea College’s campus investing club, who is proud of the progress that he has made during his time at Berea. Growing up in Letcher County, Kentucky, Aidan had never considered even applying to a private liberal arts institution until he received a postcard from Berea College’s Admission Department.
Jenny Sales, ’23, born into the Indigenous lineage of Maya Mam in Guatemala, was raised by a beloved grandmother along with her siblings and cousins. On her high school graduation day, she was asked, “Do you want to go to college?” Jenny said, “Yes, but I don’t have money to pay for college.” Then Jenny’s mentor told her about Berea College and its Tuition Promise Scholarship.
Kimberly ’26 applied to many prestigious schools—and was wait-listed for most of them. She discovered Berea College through QuestBridge, an organization dedicated to helping low-income students attend college. “Originally, I thought Berea couldn’t be real,” she said. “There was no way Berea College would pay tuition for a student.”
Without your support, students like communications major Mack ’24 of Georgetown, Kentucky, wouldn’t know the immense financial relief of a tuition-free, high-quality college education. Mack also wouldn’t have had the chance to form life-altering bonds with her professors and peers in Berea’s outstanding broadcast journalism program.
Fernando ’21 joined Berea from Richmond, Virginia, where both of his parents were educators. When Fernando enrolled at Berea College, he wanted to follow their footsteps, but, after a couple of years studying to be a teacher, he found his passion waning. So, he changed his major to Music and never looked back.
To people from the mountains, Appalachia is like no other place on earth, and they can often feel that their identity will not be welcome outside of the place they call home. Charity ’24, of Fogertown, Kentucky, frequently engages with this notion in her work and music at Berea College, where every aspect of her Appalachian background is not just welcomed—it’s celebrated.