One local Hazleton Area senior, Nicole Sanchez-Soto, is awarded an Amazon Future Engineer Scholarship.

The scholarship is $40,000, and features a paid internship at Amazon after she completes her freshman year of college.

She's one of 250 seniors from across the country to receive this scholarship.

She spoke with FOX56 about her award:

The money from the scholarship means so much to me because my mom and I were struggling a little bit figuring out how I was going to go to college, but the internship is what's most important to me because I feel like it will open so many doors for me in the computer programming world. So after college, I will hopefully have a good connection with Amazon and move on with my career from there. I felt like I couldn't do it, but there's so many opportunities with this scholarship and other scholarships out there. Even if the amount of money seems so big and out of reach, you can do it. It's right there. I hope people out there will be inspired by this because I honestly didn't think I was going to win either.

Sanchez-Soto will be attending Brown University for her post-secondary education.