Stamford Student Among National Merit Scholarship Winners

STAMFORD, CT — The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) Wednesday released the names of the first group of more than 1,000 winners in the 64th annual National Merit Scholarship Program, which includes a Stamford student among the winners.

According to the corporation, scholars were selected from students who advanced to the Finalist level in the National Merit Scholarship competition and met criteria of their scholarship sponsors. Corporate sponsors provide National Merit Scholarships for Finalists who are children of their employees, who are residents of communities the company serves, or who plan to pursue college majors or careers the sponsor wishes to encourage.

Most of these awards are renewable for up to four years of college undergraduate study
and provide annual stipends that range from $500 to $10,000 per year. Some provide a single
payment between $2,500 and $5,000. Recipients can use their awards at any regionally accredited
U.S. college or university of their choice.

Funding for these National Merit Scholarships is provided by corporate organizations that
represent nearly all sectors of American industry, officials stated. Sponsors from the business community have underwritten awards offered in all 64 competitions, expending or committing more than $804 million to support the intellectual development of the nation’s scholastically talented youth.

More than 1.6 million juniors - who were students at approximately 22,000 high schools in the U.S. - entered the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2017 Preliminary SAT/NationalMerit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants.

That number was then reduced to about 16,000 semi-finalists, and by the conclusion of the 2019 competition, about 7,600 Finalists will have been selected to receive National Merit Scholarships totaling over $31 million.

The local student to receive a National Merit Scholarship is:

Ashley J. Xu from King School, Stamford
Probable career field: Industrial Engineering

NATIONAL MERIT AON SCHOLARSHIP
Aon Corporation is an international, strategically-diverse company headquartered in Chicago, meeting the insurance and financial services needs of individuals and corporate clients with a broad range of innovative and specialized insurance products marketed through a wide variety of distribution channels. Its brokerage and consulting services are directed toward helping companies, institutions and associations manage risk in a complex and challenging commercial world.

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