Valencia College Stories

An Osceola Prosper scholarship opened doors for John Urbach; now he’s planning for a career in medicine

— by Linda Shrieves

In high school, John Urbach always thought he was going to college after graduation, but he wasn’t serious about it until the middle of his senior year.

“I was planning on going to college, but I had zero plan about how I would do that.

I wasn’t thinking that far ahead,” he says.

But in January of his senior year, when Osceola County Commission officials marched into the auditorium at Gateway High School and announced that they would fund scholarships for every one of the county’s graduating seniors, John sat up straight.

“I was like, ‘wait, what?’ I snapped to attention,” he says.

 

Coming from a family of three kids, John knew that his parents couldn’t afford to pay for his college tuition. So the Osceola Prosper program – which guaranteed a full scholarship to Valencia College – was a godsend.

John began taking classes at Valencia College in fall 2022, just a few months after his high school graduation.
“I walked on campus and I was like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I’m in college. It’s super cool.’ “

 And, when he did the financial aid paperwork, he realized what a gift the Osceola Prosper program was.

“My first year that I filled out the FAFSA, I didn’t get a Pell grant,” he says. “So, I would have had to pay for all my classes of out my pocket.  And that probably would have stopped me entirely from starting college. To be honest with you, I’d probably still be working at Circle K, if it weren’t for Osceola Prosper.”

That first semester, he started with just two classes. “It was a nice introduction to college, and I decided I was going to start studying biology,” he says. “My goal is to be a doctor, but if I don’t do that, maybe I can be a physician’s assistant or something along those lines.”

To support himself, John continued working at the gas station while taking classes – until he spotted a part-time job at Valencia College. That job, working in the Osceola Prosper office, helping other Osceola County students in the program, allowed him to ramp up his schedule and attend college full-time.

The best part of the job, though, is helping other students.

“Most of the students we work with are first-generation college students. And that’s the greatest impact – seeing the impact on their lives,” says John, who’s now 21. “We also have so many students who submit FAFSA and they don’t qualify for Pell. Or students who only qualify for half Pell… Prosper is the only way they can pay for college.”

John has become an ambassador for the Prosper program – not just at the college, but at home, too. His 20-year-old sister is already a Prosper student at Valencia College and his youngest sister is enrolling when she graduates from high school.

As for John, he graduates from Valencia College in the fall of 2025 and has already started on his medical pathway. He now works part-time as a medical scribe and he’ll be starting at the University of Central Florida in 2026.