Ritenour High School Senior Earns Prestigious National College Scholarship
Reagan Roach, a senior at Ritenour High School, earned a full scholarship to her first-choice, highly selective college, Washington University, as a 2024-2025 QuestBridge Match Scholar.
Roach plans to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering at the university’s McKelvey School of Engineering.
The QuestBridge College Match Scholarship is a highly selective process that matches top-ranked students who have financial need to one of 52 highly selective colleges and universities. In December, Questbridge matched 2,627 scholars nationwide out of the more than 25,500 students who applied to the QuestBridge program this school year.
Roach, a lifelong student in Ritenour, started her educational journey as a kindergartner at Iveland Elementary and then attended Ritenour Middle before entering Ritenour High School. She vividly remembers the long-awaited email on Dec. 2 from QuestBridge.
“I saw the email during seventh hour but waited to read it until my mom picked me up from school, said Roach. “When I saw I was matched with WashU, it was an instant relief. It felt so right.”
At RHS, Roach shares her talent as a saxophone player in the marching band, as well as in the jazz and pep bands. She also has used her budding engineering skills to help build sets for RHS productions such as Clue, Puffs (Two Act for Young Wizards), Cinderella and Aida School Edition. She also plans to help build sets and manage the stage for the RHS production of Hadestown in April.
“I specifically designed the moving staircase - my favorite project - for Cinderella that connected to a bridge that spanned across the stage,” said Roach.
In addition to her technical skills, Roach was the assistant stage manager for the Aida musical,
In the community, Roach has broadened her technical theater skills through The Muny’s Technical Theatre Training program, which allowed her to work alongside local and national professionals to build sets and work backstage for the production of Narnia with Dayspring Arts & Education.
Roach said she is looking forward to participating in band and theater at WashU, studying in its libraries and using the engineering school’s machine shop and studio in the Spartan Light Metal Products Makerspace.
Academically, Roach is well on her way to being prepared for college. As an AP Scholar, Roach has scored well on AP exams in English language arts, chemistry, U.S. government, and world history. She currently is taking AP calculus and AP physics.
In recent years, RHS has had three other QuestBridge College Match scholars: Lindsy Garcia, a 2023 graduate who attends WashU; Martin Trujillo Carrazco, a 2019 graduate, who also matched with WashU; Isaiah Murrell-Thomas, a 2018 graduate, who matched with the University of Notre Dame.