8 HoCo Students Receive 2nd Round Of National Merit Scholarships

HOWARD COUNTY, MD — Eight students from Howard County are winners of the second round of the National Merit Scholarship, which awards $2500 to recipients. For each state, the number of winners is proportional to the state’s percentage of the nation’s graduating high school seniors. The program says the winners are the finalists “judged to have the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills and potential for success in rigorous college studies.”

More than 1.5 million students applied for the highly competitive scholarship and the program says that around 7,500 students will go on to win scholarships in 2021 that total $30 million. Winners of the college-sponsored scholarship will be announced in June and July.

Here are the Howard County winners of the $2,500 scholarships:

• Ruby R. Chen, River Hill High School, intends to study computer programming
• Jerry Y. Xiong, River Hill High School, intends to study computer science
• Peter E. Frazier, Atholton High School, intends to study mechanical engineering
• Joanna Jeyachandran, Notre Dame Preparatory School, intends to study medicine
• Aaron S. Chen, Centennial High School, intends to study computer science
• Anika T. Huang, Centennial High School, intends to study finance
• Nicholas A. Snyder, Mount Hebron High School, intends to study economics
• Esha Gupta, Reservoir High School, intends to study medicine

A total of 16,000 students were selected as finalists for the scholarships and the final winners are candidates “judged to have the strongest combination of academic skills and achievements, extracurricular accomplishments, and potential for success in rigorous college studies.”