National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) announced approximately 3,000 winners of National Merit Scholarships financed by U.S. colleges and universities. Officials of each sponsor college selected their scholarship winners from among the Finalists in the 2016 National Merit Scholarship Program who plan to attend their institution.
Winners from Garland ISD are:
Mutasim A. Chowdhury from Garland High School
Jennifer Ashley DeMars from Rowlett High School
These awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship. An additional group of Scholars will be announced in July, bringing the total number of college-sponsored Merit Scholarship recipients in the 2016 competition to approximately 4,000.
This year, 184 higher education institutions are underwriting Merit Scholarship awards through the National Merit Scholarship Program. Sponsor colleges and universities include 106 private and 78 public institutions located in 45 states and the District of Columbia.
NMSC Competition
More than 1.5 million juniors in some 22,000 high schools entered the 2016 National Merit Scholarship competition when they took the 2014 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The test served as an initial screen of program entrants. Last fall, approximately 16,000 Semifinalists were named on a state-representational basis in numbers proportional to each state’s percentage of the national total of graduating high school seniors.
Semifinalists were the highest-scoring program entrants in each state and represented less than 1 percent of the nation’s seniors. To compete for Merit Scholarship awards, Semifinalists first had to advance to the Finalist level of the competition by fulfilling additional requirements. Each Semifinalist was asked to submit a detailed scholarship application, which included writing an essay and providing information about extracurricular activities, awards, and leadership positions. Semifinalists also had to have an outstanding academic record, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, and earn SAT® scores that confirmed the qualifying test performance.
NMSC, a nonprofit corporation that operates without government assistance, was established in 1955 to conduct the National Merit Scholarship Program. The majority of National Merit Scholarships provided each year are made possible by the support of approximately 440 independent corporate and college sponsors. These sponsors join NMSC in its efforts to enhance educational opportunities for America’s scholastically talented youth and to encourage the pursuit of academic excellence.