WHEN 20-year-old Alyssa Almo received word late Friday that she topped the nursing exam, besting more than 18,000 other takers across the country, she did not want to sleep.
“I was afraid I would wake up and realize it was just a dream,” said Almo, a graduate of the Remedios Trinidad Romualdez Medical Foundation in Tacloban City.
Almo, accompanied by her grandparents, received an initial cash prize of P20,000 from RTRMF president Juliette Romualdez and vice chairman Philip Romualdez along with senatorial candidate Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez in a simple ceremony at the Manila Golf Club on Saturday.
She will get P100,000 more once she takes her oath. RTRMF also offered her full scholarship if she decides to pursue medicine.
The eldest of three children, she said she will use her cash prize for the tuition and educational needs of her siblings.
A native of Quinapondan, Eastern Samar, Almo said she chose to enroll at RTRMF because of the school’s stellar performance, being a top performing school for nursing for eight years now.
“When I enrolled at RTR, it had a passing rate of 97 percent and consistently had passers in the top 10,” she said.
The school’s record has even improved—it achieved a 100-percent passing rate for all its graduates for two consecutive years now.
“We are very fortunate that practically every year, we produce topnotchers,” said Mrs. Romualdez, the daughter-in-law of the late Remedios Romualdez, whom the school was named after.
“When we started the school, it was my husband’s [the late Ambassador Benjamin Romualdez] vision to honor his mother. As you know, Eastern Visayas and Leyte before were considered as not so well-off provinces. So he put up the school to help young people,” she added.