2018 National Merit Scholarships Awarded To Two Stamford Students

STAMFORD, CT — King School senior Ethan J. Marsh and Westhill High School senior Bailey L. Paulk were named two of approximately 3,500 National Merit Scholarship winners for 2018, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) announced this week.

Marsh, a Darien resident whose probable career field is mechanical engineering (automotive), was given the following award:

NATIONAL MERIT CLEMSON UNIVERSITY SCHOLARSHIP
Clemson University is a state-supported, land-grant university accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. With 59 undergraduate and 80 graduate degree programs under colleges of Agricultural Sciences, Architecture, Commerce and Industry, Education, Engineering, Liberal Arts, Nursing, Sciences, Parks, Recreation and Tourism, and graduate school, the state's high-technologic, scientific institute currently serves nearly 12,000 undergraduate and graduate students.

Paulk, whose probable career field is computer science, was given the following award:

NATIONAL MERIT UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS SCHOLARSHIP
The University of Texas at Dallas offers high-quality courses of study in seven schools: Arts and Humanities; the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science; Management; Human Development; Natural Sciences and Mathematics; Social Sciences; and General Studies. Established in 1969, the university offers apartment-style housing, rather than dorms, on a 500-acre campus located in North Dallas/Richardson, one of the top three high-technology corridors in the country.

The National Merit Scholarships are financed by U.S. colleges and universities, and officials from each sponsor college select their scholarship winners from among the Finalists in the 2018 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," states NMSC. "An additional group of Scholars will be announced in July, bringing the total number of college-sponsored Merit Scholarship recipients in the 2018 competition to about 4,000."

For 2018, 178 higher education institutions are underwriting Merit Scholarship awards through the National Merit Scholarship Program. Those sponsor colleges and universities include 100 private and 78 public institutions located in 44 states and the District of Columbia, according to NMSC.

The college-sponsored Merit Scholarship winners are a part of the distinguished group of about 7,500 high school seniors who will receive National Merit Scholarships for college undergraduate study worth a total of more than $31 million. Earlier this spring, NMSC announced winners of corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards and National Merit $2500 Scholarships.

From the National Merit Scholarship Corporation's release:

2018 National Merit Scholarship Competition
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®), which 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 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® scores that confirmed the qualifying test performance. From the Semifinalist group, some 15,000 met requirements for Finalist standing, and about half of the Finalists will be Merit Scholarship winners in 2018.

NMSC, a not-for-profit 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 410 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.

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