The programme, which is in its third year, aims to improve access to tertiary education by providing financial support to school leavers.
Former Dunstan High School student Aimee Baird said she was grateful for the incredible opportunity as veterinarian sciences was an expensive degree.
Applying for the scholarship involved filling out an application with sections for academic performance, hobbies and community involvement.
Miss Baird was then interviewed before being successful in her application.
"It was really awesome, because honestly, I probably wouldn’t be able to afford going to uni without it."
The $40,000 grant would mean she would receive $10,000 a year for four years of her study, she said.
Miss Baird is due to start the pre-selection course for the bachelor of veterinary science in Palmerston North later this month and hoped to pass the semester-long course and become one of the 125 selected to complete the degree.
After graduating, she hoped to specialise in birds.
Miss Baird had volunteered at vets’ clinics for five years, as well as at bird sanctuaries and with a budgie breeder.
Native birds were of interest to her and when she had volunteered with the Conservation Department sanctuary in Te Anau she got some hands-on time with a kaka, her favourite native bird.
"They’ve got a lot of personality, and they’re really intelligent and quite cool."
Birds were not something vets typically specialised in, she said.
"You talk to vets, and you go, ‘oh, what do you want to get into?’ and they don’t really go birds.
They’ll go like, you know, cattle or domestic vets."
Working with conservation and native birds was the main plan for Miss Baird, but she as she kept budgies growing up she was also considering working with exotic birds, she said.
It was an experience with one of her sick birds that made her look into working with them.
"We had, like, lots of budgies, and sometimes we had about one sick one, and we took them to the vets, and they were like, oh ... there’s not really anything we can do," she said.
