Three Auburn students have been named YMA Fashion Scholars, each receiving $5,000 from the YMA Fashion Scholarship Fund.
Sara Gardner, senior in apparel merchandising; Hannah Blevins, senior in apparel merchandising; and Kelsey Reynolds, senior in apparel design, were the three recipients.
None of them expected to actually win the scholarship.
"It was kind of a shot in the dark," Reynolds said. "I just wanted to go ahead and apply for it and see if I could get it and see what opportunities came out of it."
The girls were among approximately 100 other people who received the scholarship throughout the country, but many more applied for it.
The YMA Fashion Scholarship Fund is very selective with who they send their information to.
They select a number of universities across the United States and then professors at those universities choose the students that they think should apply, Reynolds said.
"They want the students who apply to do a job that will represent the university well," Reynolds said.
Each recipient was contacted by the dean of their college and given the guidelines for the process.
The application process consisted of multiple parts.
"We had to write a case study which consisted of a few different parts," Gardner said. "We had a phone interview as well."
The case study was different for the design students and the merchandising students.
The design students had to create a clothing line for preteens, while the merchandising students created a financial plan for the line, Gardner said.
"We had to have marketing techniques, how we were going to advertise for it, where we were going to sell it," Blevins said. "Every single component of a six month plan we had to come up with on our own within one month and had school on top of all of that so it was a lot of work for what seemed like I didn't even know if I was going to win, but it was definitely worth it."
Reynolds said that she used more of the design techniques that she has learned throughout her major.
The three scholarship recipients all said that the best part of the process was the connections that they made for their future.
The recipients flew to New York and met with college representatives from multiple brand name companies like Macy's.
"There was a ton of college representatives there for us to meet and greet with and really just make connections with," Blevins said.
Blevins said this is really what she wants to do with her major.
"I really wanted to be able to know what it's going to be like when I'm out of college and what I am going to have to do on a regular basis," Blevins said.
The scholarship money comes from donors in the fashion industry and Geoffrey Beene, American fashion designer.
"The Geoffrey Beene scholarship donated a lot of money just for this cause because he believed in fashion students and what they could achieve," Blevins said. "They really believe that we are the leaders in the fashion industry."
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