San Francisco High School Senior Receives Surprise College Scholarship from Amazon

Amazon surprised Phillip & Sala Burton Academic High School senior Anthony Li with a $40,000 Amazon Future Engineer scholarship during a special classroom presentation on Thursday. Anthony, a first-generation Chinese- American college student who is fluent in Cantonese and English, has been accepted to UC Berkeley as a double major in Computer Science and Finance. He will be the first in his family to attend college.

The surprise took place during Li’s engineering class session, featuring a guest speaker who is a former Amazon Future Engineer scholarship recipient. In addition to the $40,000 scholarship toward his undergraduate degree, Anthony will receive an offer to complete a paid 12-week summer internship at Amazon after his freshman year, where he'll work on projects that impact Amazon customers and receive mentorship from Amazon leaders.

"Anthony is exactly the kind of student this scholarship was made for—perceptive, sharp, and driven to understand how things work,” said Audrey Portley-Bernstein, Engineering Teacher at Burton High School, who nominated Anthony for the scholarship. "What makes this moment meaningful is that his journey started in our engineering academy years before college. That's why early STEM exposure matters—we're not just teaching subjects, we're opening doors students didn't know existed. Programs like Amazon Future Engineer that invest in young people before college give students like Anthony the confidence to pursue careers they never imagined possible."

Amazon Future Engineer is part of Amazon's investment in computer science and STEM education, providing free access to STEM opportunities, resources, and scholarships for students from underserved communities. In 2026, Amazon will award 200 scholarships totaling up to $8 million in paid tuition. Since the program's inception in 2019, Amazon has committed $70 million in scholarships to over 1,700 students nationwide.

Anthony's story embodies the program's mission: a first-generation college student with exceptional aptitude in math, science, and coding who will now have the financial support and professional mentorship to pursue his engineering dreams at UC Berkeley.