Before Quimberly Jasso’s freshman year, her mother took out the checkbook to buy her daughter a Texas Exes lifetime student membership. 

Jasso’s membership made her eligible for the scholarship she won this February.

“I said to her, ‘Mom, you don’t have that money,’ because (the membership) was a lot of her paycheck,” Jasso said. “This scholarship was a way to show her she did something for me. It had an impact.”

The international relations and global studies junior recently won the Texas Exes Ring Scholarship, an annual contest which awards a ring to a rising senior who embodies tradition. The student also must have completed 75 hours of coursework, be a Texas Exes member and show excellence in academics, leadership and service.

Jasso is a Terry scholar and has studied abroad in China and Spain on full scholarship. Jasso also gave tours to middle and high school students from low-income households through the Hispanic Business Student Association and spoke to them about college readiness and her own personal experience.

“The way I carried on the UT tradition was definitely through talking to those students,” Jasso said. “When I first came to college, I felt so unfamiliar and so out of place.”

Jasso said she graduated from an underfunded high school and originally felt financially discouraged about college because family members told her she would need to take out loans.

“Even my own grandmother was saying, ‘You need to think realistically,’” Jasso said.

Jasso went on to pay her own tuition with scholarships and had “For My Mother” engraved inside the band of her yellow gold ring because she said her mother worked hard and sacrificed for her three daughters.

“She is the reason I work so hard in life, because she never complained about what her situation was,” Jasso said.

International business senior Hunter Bezner is a Texas Exes student ambassador who read over Jasso’s application and said she stood out among 100 other applicants. 

“Quimberly understood that a UT ring is about celebrating her own accomplishments,” Bezner said.

Lewis Hall, Texas Exes Student Engagement Coordinator, said Jasso will receive her ring on April 27 at the Senior Ring Celebration along with others who ordered during Ring Week last week.

“A (senior) ring is pricey and I understand that,” Hall said. “But it’s a good way to honor your time here and remember the things that you started.”