Six East Brunswick HS Students Win National Merit Scholarships

EAST BRUNSWICK, NJ — Six East Brunswick High School students won National Merit Scholarships for 2020; the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced the winners this week.

These local East Brunswick teens were among more than 1.5 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools to enter the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2018 PSATs, which served as an initial screen of program entrants.

The group was then narrowed down to 16,000 semifinalists. 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 or ACT scores that confirmed the qualifying test performance. From the semifinalist group, about half of the finalists were named Merit Scholarship winners in 2020.

Here are the 2020 winners from East Brunswick:

• Sarah Adams, Received a National Merit scholarship to attend Rutgers. Probable career field: Medicine
• Sophie Brown, Received a National Merit scholarship to attend Rutgers. Probable career field: Writing
• Jackson Lee, Received a National Merit scholarship to attend Rutgers. Probable career field: Computer Science
• Belinda Zhang, Received a National Merit scholarship to attend Rutgers. Probable career field: Pharmacy
• Jeffrey Han, Received a National Merit Scholarship from E*TRADE Financial Corporation. Available to the children of its employees. Probable career field: Biochemistry
• Lucy Zou, Received a National Merit Scholarship from McGraw-Hill. Probable career field: Nanotechnology

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