When Emily Slaughter was in high school, one summer her mom said, “You shouldn’t go swimming every day. Why don’t you go get some meaningful experience?” So Emily began volunteering at a Fort Worth hospital. “I was basically a candy striper but in a really critical care unit. The nurses knew I was interested in medicine and took me under their wing and said, ‘Why don’t you come and see what we do?’” From then on, nursing was her calling. She knew UT’s School of Nursing had a great reputation, and on a whim, applied for the full-ride Forty Acres Scholarship. Finalists for the scholarship are brought to campus for a weekend. “By the end of that weekend, I was like, ‘I don’t care if I get the scholarship; I have fallen in love with this school,’” she remembers. “This is a first-class school. This is a first-class institution. I’m coming no matter what!” She already has accepted a job offer from Ascension Seton in Austin, but graduate school and certification as a nurse practitioner are...