North Fulton Students Awarded National Merit Scholarships

JOHNS CREEK, GA — The National Merit Scholarship Corporation on Wednesday announced the winners of National Merit Scholarships financed by U.S. colleges and universities. Officials of each sponsor college selected the roughly 3,500 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 each year 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 2018 competition to about 4,000.

This year, 178 higher education institutions are underwriting Merit Scholarship awards through the National Merit Scholarship Program. Sponsor colleges and universities include 100 private and 78 public institutions located in 44 states and the District of Columbia.

(For more news like this, find your local Patch here. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app; download the free Patch Android app here)

The winners from North Fulton public and private high schools are:

• Matthew Bennett Buxbaum, Alpharetta High School
• Suzanne Enos, Johns Creek High School
• Srijita Nandy, Cambridge High School
• Akanksha Sharma, Chattahoochee High School
• Emma Grace Turner, Milton High School
• Stephanie Zhang, Johns Creek High School
• Christie Chow, Northview High School
• Sarika Temme-Bapat, Northview High School
• Fatih S. Altunbasak, Johns Creek High School
• Victor Chatterjee, home schooled student
• Seungmin Chung, Northview High School
• Alexander Luiz Costa, Chattahoochee High School
• Aparna Pateria, Northview High School
• Supraja Sama, Chattahoochee High School
• Caroline C. Riedl, Blessed Trinity Catholic High School
• David G. Sullivan, Holy Spirit Preparatory School
• Ryan Eck, Roswell High School
• Cassandra Shea Manrique, Roswell High School
• Joseph A. Ross, Roswell High School
• Nathaniel Yang, Northview High School

College-sponsored Merit Scholarship winners announced Wednesday 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 over $31 million. Earlier this spring, NMSC announced winners of corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards and National Merit $2,500 Scholarships.

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, about 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 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. They 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 that group, some 15,000 met requirements for finalist standing, and about half of the finalists will be Merit Scholarship winners in 2018.

Image via Shutterstock