Goodness. Discipline. Knowledge. These three words changed meaning for Divine Tabios once she stepped inside the gates at Mount Saint Vincent. She says, “These words have not only become the words with which to live my life, [but] these are the words that inspire me to be better than what I [thought I] could be.” 

Just as she was graduating high school in 2000, Tabios’s family was coming out of bankruptcy, and she didn’t qualify for college financial aid. Tabios, who moved to the United States from the Philippines at the age of 10, could only pray for a miracle. 

That summer, a miracle arrived in a thin white envelope. Tabios received the Corazon Aquino scholarship from Mount Saint Vincent, a full-tuition scholarship given to the Filipino American applicant with the highest all-around high school academic performance. 

Without this scholarship, Tabios would have gone to a community college for two years and attempted to save enough money to pursue a bachelor’s degree.  “Since [the scholarship], the Mount has not stopped providing me with opportunities that have changed the course of my life,” she says.
 
Tabios has made the most of these opportunities. She was on the dean’s list all fours years; became one of the senior editors for Parapet, the first yearbook the College had produced in 20 years; and served as a residential assistant starting in her junior year. In 2004 she graduated summa cum laude and began an internship at The Staten Island Advance, and now works at a leading philanthropic services company. Goodness!