ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The American Dream can look very different for each individual — whether it’s that perfect picket fence or that brand new car. 

“Ever since I was a kid, airplanes, aerospace, everything like that really interested me,” said Amos Prince, a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology. 

When Prince was young, he had dreams of one day becoming a pilot.

“Piloting would be really cool, but building it would be even better,” he said. “It’s like I’m really doing rocket science here."

Now a first-year student at RIT, Prince's dream to fly is now a dream to create flight.

“Like getting into the nitty gritty of airplanes," he said.

It's a dream he doesn’t believe would have been as palpable in his home country of Guyana.

“Looking back from where I came from, these are opportunities I might have not ever been able to get, right? So I’m really thankful for where I am today,” Prince said. “The only people in my family that actually went to school were my grandmother’s sister’s children.”

He moved to the United States with his parents when he was 5 years old and is now paying for college on his own.

“My high school counselor created a Google classroom with a list of scholarships and I actually found the Bridging the Dream Scholarship, and I was like 'wait, this is really cool,' " he said.

Prince is one of only 40 students throughout the United States to be awarded the Bridging the Dream Scholarship from the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and Sallie Mae.

“I remember this exactly ... 7:45, my alarm went off; I usually hit snooze three times until I actually get out of bed,” he said. “They emailed me and I was like 'wait, I wanna see what this is.' And then I saw 'congratulations.' "

It has helped make Prince's dream come true and is reminding him of his mother’s advice.

"She always tells us to dream big, because thats why we’re here," he said.