3 Hillsborough Students Win National Merit Scholarships

HILLSBOROUGH, NJ — Three Hillsborough students have won National Merit Scholarships for 2020, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced.

Here are the winners from Hillsborough:

Corporate-Sponsored Merit Scholarship Winners

• Hillsborough High School student Swara Ramaswamy earned a national merit scholarship from the Mary E. Beyerle. Ramaswamy will likely pursue a career in medicine.

National Merit® $2500 Scholarship Winners

• Hillsborough High School student Alan J. Ji earned $2,500 from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation's own funds. Ji will likely pursue a career in engineering.
• Hillsborough High School student Yinuo Xu earned $2,500 from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation's own funds. Xu will likely pursue a career in fine arts.

The Hillsborough students 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 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), 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.

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