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Best Friends From Norwalk High School Earn Exclusive College Scholarships

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — 12th graders Kethzia Higuera and Celeste Larios of Norwalk High School are two best friends who do everything together.

Both girls are heavily involved with volunteer work, and both have GPA's well over 4.0.

The two met the summer before 9th grade at tennis practice. "The first day of school, we ended up sitting next to each other and kinda got to talking," Higuera said.

"The bond just grew from there," Larios added.

Both are winners of the pretigious Gates Millennium Scholarship, where out of 56,000 applicants this year, only 1,000 students across the country get this award.

"It's a little overwhelming becayse everything happened so fast and I'm glad I get to share it with her," Higuera said.

The scholarships are designed to help the country's best and brightest low-income minority students go to the college of their choice for free.

"We're proud of each other. We supported each other the whole time. We pushed each other to apply and acheive it," Larios said.

Once high school ends, the two will go their separate ways.

Higuera will attend UC Irvine so she can obtain her nursing degree, while Larios is headed to Stanford to major in environmental engineering.

However, the two say they will stay in touch and plan to reunite this fall at the 2016 Gates Millenium Leadership retreat in Santa Clara.

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