Holly Amerson wanted to go to TCU, but didn’t think she could afford it. The Irving high school student knew she would have to pay her own way through school because her parents had filed for bankruptcy and were facing home foreclosure. So she applied at the University of North Texas as well as TCU.

Thanks to the efforts of the financial aid office, Amerson was able to piece together a patchwork of loans, scholarships, grants and work-study jobs to make TCU more affordable than UNT. She eagerly became a Frog.

But it hasn’t been easy. After her freshman year, tuition went up and she wasn’t sure she would be able to come up with the additional funds, so she didn’t enroll.

“I barely had enough to pay for my freshman year and tuition was rising,” she said. “I made plans to transfer to UNT.”

That’s when Mike Scott, director of financial aid, discovered that Amerson didn’t re-enroll. He encouraged her to apply for more scholarships, including one funded by Jerry Ray ’58 and his wife Betty — which she was awarded. Amerson met the Rays at an annual scholarship dinner that connects donors to the students who have benefited from their largesse.

“They’re wonderful people,” she said. “They sponsored me my sophomore and junior years.”

Now a senior accounting major with close to a 4.0 grade point average, Amerson is deeply grateful.

“TCU is a better fit for me,” she said. “We have such a great business school and wonderful networking opportunities I wouldn’t have had at UNT.”

While she will graduate with about $30,000 in student loan debt, she has plans to get an MBA, hopefully at TCU.

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