Scholarship America is proud to celebrate our 2026 class of Dream Award Scholars.
Each of these students has overcome obstacles and begun their college journey thanks to their grit, drive and determination—and the Dream Award provides them essential financial support so they can complete their education with less debt and less stress.
These renewable scholarships stay with students through the remainder of their college careers, ensuring that they can stay on track and finish their degrees. Since its founding in 2014, the Dream Award has helped nearly 200 talented, determined learners, and we’re excited to welcome the 2026 Dream Award cohort.
Today we’re introducing Mimi Hiibel, who has overcome personal and health obstacles to set herself on a path toward a degree in psychology at Idaho’s Lewis-Clark State College. Mimi grew up in the foster care system, and she says, “My education took a very different path than most people’s. I left school in the second grade and eventually earned my GED in 2018. Sometimes I have to stop and think about how far I have come—from leaving school … to now working toward walking across the stage with a bachelor’s degree.”
Here’s our conversation with Mimi; visit our blog to meet more of the 2026 cohort of Dream Award Scholars.
What inspired you to pursue your field of study?
Growing up in the foster care system and leaving school in second grade taught me what it feels like when life doesn’t give you the same opportunities as everyone else.
Later in life, I went back to school and earned my GED in just one year. Then I went on to college. At 36, I suffered a stroke and had to learn how to speak all over again. There have been a lot of times in my life when I could have decided that my circumstances were too much to overcome.
Instead, I kept going.
I have also spent three years of my college education homeless. Those experiences have taught me what it feels like to need someone who will listen, care, and not judge you.
I believe helping professions, like psychology, take more than just an education. You have to have a good heart and genuinely care about people. One of the most important things I have learned is that being a good psychologist isn’t always about being understood. It is about learning to understand.
I want to bring people up, listen to them, support them, and help them recognize that they still have value and possibilities, even when life has made them feel otherwise.
How did you find out about the Scholarship America Dream Award?
I actually found the Dream Award during one of the hardest times in my life. Two summers ago, I was paralyzed and bedridden. I couldn’t do much of anything, and one of the only things I was physically able to do was use my hand to type on a keyboard.
While I was lying in bed, I started searching for scholarships because I was determined to find a way to continue my education. That’s when I found the Scholarship America Dream Award.
Finding that scholarship while I was in such a difficult place became one more reason to keep believing that I could still move forward. I was physically unable to do many things at the time, but I could still search, apply, and work toward my education.
What stresses does the Dream Award relieve? Are you able to pursue opportunities or outside activities you couldn’t before?
The Dream Award certainly helps relieve financial stress, but for me, it means much more than that.
When you are trying to earn a degree while also worrying about where you are going to sleep, how you are going to get where you need to go, and how you are going to make it through the next day, it can be difficult to focus on the future.
The Dream Award gives me an opportunity to finish what I started. It provides financial breathing room, but it also provides something just as important: support and the feeling that someone believes in me and believes that I can succeed.
That support allows me to focus more fully on finishing my degree, completing my internship, and creating the career I want.
I also hope to carry that same kind of support into my work. I want to be the person who listens, who helps bring people up instead of putting them down, and who understands that sometimes people don’t need someone to tell them what to do—they need someone willing to listen and understand where they are coming from.
What are you most looking forward to during this school year?
This summer has been a difficult one for me. I had neck surgery, faced some personal challenges and temptations, and also moved. There were times when I had to take things one day at a time and remind myself why I started this journey in the first place.
Even with everything that happened, I kept moving forward. I am looking forward to getting back into my routine, focusing on my classes, and getting closer to graduation. I am especially excited about my internship because I will finally get to take what I have learned in the classroom and use it to help people in real life.
What’s your dream or ideal plan right after graduating? How about in five years?
After I graduate, I want to begin working in social work while continuing my education toward a master’s degree. I am especially interested in working with people who are experiencing homelessness, addiction and recovery, reentry, poverty, or other difficult circumstances.
My goal is to work with people who may feel like they have run out of options and help them find a way forward.
In five years, I hope to have completed my master’s degree and be established in a career where I can make a real difference in people’s lives. I would also like to work with or develop programs that give people practical support and a second chance to build a better life.
If you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?
I would tell my younger self, “Don’t give up on yourself just because your circumstances are difficult. Your past does not determine what you are capable of becoming.”
I would tell that little girl who left school in the second grade that she was capable of much more than she could imagine.
I would tell her that being a foster child doesn’t mean she has to stay stuck in the life she was given. I would tell her that it is never too late to learn, to start over, or to dream bigger.
I never imagined that the little girl who left school in the second grade would one day earn her GED in one year, survive a stroke at 36 and learn to speak again, spend three years working toward a college degree while homeless, and still make it this far.
Is there anything you’d like to add?
I am incredibly grateful for the people and organizations that have believed in my education and helped me keep going. The Dream Award is more than financial assistance to me. It is a reminder that someone believes my education and my future are worth investing in.
I am not pursuing a degree just to have a piece of paper. I want to take everything I have learned both in school and through my own life and use it to help other people.
I have learned that sometimes the most important thing we can do for another person is simply to listen and try to understand. I want to bring people up, not judge them. I want to help people see possibilities when they can’t see them for themselves.
I started this journey trying to change my own life. Now I hope to use what I have learned to help change someone else’s.
