National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) has announced over 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 2023 National Merit Scholarship Program who plan to attend their institution. 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 2023 competition to more than 3,800.
This year, 153 higher education institutions are underwriting Merit Scholarship awards through the NMSC program.
The college-sponsored Merit Scholarship winners announced today are a part of the distinguished group of more than 7,140 high school seniors who will receive National Merit Scholarships for college undergraduate study worth nearly $28 million. Earlier this spring, NMSC announced winners of corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards and National Merit $2500 Scholarships.
Alexander M. Payne, Sachse HS graduate, was the recipient of one of the scholarships. His probable career field is Physics.
2023 National Merit Scholarship Competition
High school juniors entered the 2023 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2021 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. Last fall, more than 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 one 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® or ACT® scores that confirmed the qualifying test performance. From the Semifinalist group, over 15,000 met requirements for Finalist standing, and about half of the Finalists will be Merit Scholarship winners in 2023.
NMSC, a nonprofit organization that operates without government assistance, was established in 1955 to conduct the National Merit Scholarship Program.