A rural student's quest for a college scholarship, disappointed

Eric Hoover reported a few days ago in the Chronicle of Higher Education about a student out of rural Washington whose quest for a scholarship were frustrated.  This woman sought an ROTC scholarship that would have gotten her out of state, all the way to the east coast, but her efforts were frustrated because of a medical condition that disqualified her from serving in the military.  In the end, she's going to the local college not far away--Washington State's main campus in Pullman.  Here's an excerpt:  

Denni Fealy wanted to go to college far away from home. Not because she disliked Palouse, Wash., a small town where she and all her friends grew up within a four-block radius and pedaled their bikes everywhere. She loved the farming community where time fastened people together and neighbors depended on one another. And she always could feel her “second family” encircling her.

The high-school senior longed to leave despite her fondness for Palouse — and in some ways because of it. She needed to experience a different place and learn how to live on her own: “I want to assemble within myself the ability to be self-reliant.” She wanted to prove that she could thrive in another place and then be able to say, “I did this.”

So she researched colleges several hundred miles from the two-story converted double-wide trailer with tan siding that she shares with her parents, grandmother, and a black labradoodle named Max. She let herself imagine heading to California, to Texas, or across the continent to upstate New York.

Fealy, a reflective young woman who plans to study actuarial science, knew her family didn’t have much money to put toward college. Her father works in the information-technology division of an engineering laboratory. Her mother is the primary caregiver for her own mother. They had socked away all their savings for retirement in regular bank accounts, Fealy says: On paper they appeared much wealthier than they really were.

Don't miss the rest of the story, which is rich indeed, and a real education about rural America (to the extent it can be generalized).  Also, Fealy's attitude about the Washington State campus nearby, which is where she'll be enrolled this fall, is super interesting in and of itself; indeed, it's consequential that Fealy lives so close to a good college.  Many rural high school graduates don't get the benefit of that, yet data show the vast majority of those who go to college attend an institution close to where they grew up.