National Merit Scholarship Corporation recently announced approximately 3,500 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 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program who plan to attend their institution. The awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship. Another group of scholars will be announced in July, bringing the number of 2018 college-sponsored scholarship winners to about 4,000.
Garland ISD students who won scholarships at this time are:
Safwan M. Chowdhury, Garland HS graduate who will attend the University of Texas-Dallas
Austin C. Hill, Garland HS graduate who will attend Texas Christian University
Ryan W. Mann, Garland HS graduate who will attend the University of Oklahoma
John C. Hardy, Rowlett HS graduate who will attend Texas A&M University
Caleb T. Harris, Lakeview Centennial HS who will attend the University of North Texas
Ryan A. Trout, Garland HS graduate who will attend Texas A&M University
This year, 178 higher education institutions are underwriting scholarship awards through the National Merit Scholarship Program. Sponsor colleges and universities include 100 private and 78 public institutions.
College-sponsored scholarship winners announced here are part of the distinguished group of about 7,500 high school seniors who will receive National Merit Scholarships for college undergraduate study worth over $31 million.
Over 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2016 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®). 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 one percent of the nation’s seniors.
To compete for awards, semifinalists first had to advance to the finalist level fulfilling additional requirements. Each semifinalist was asked to submit a detailed 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. From the semifinalist group, about 15,000 became finalists. About half of them will be Merit Scholarship winners.