16 Lawrenceville School Students In Running For Merit Scholarship

LAWRENCEVILLE, NJ — Sixteen students at the Lawrenceville School are among the 16,000 semifinalists in the 64th annual National Merit Scholarship Program, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) announced on Monday. They remain eligible for some 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $31 million that will be offered next spring, according to NMSC officials.

There are several requirements a semifinalist must meet to be considered for the finalist. Over 90 percent of the semifinalists are expected to reach the finals, and about half the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship.

Over 1.6 million juniors in about 22,000 high schools entered the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, according to officials.

The students who scored the highest in each state reached the semifinals. The number of semifinalists in each state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors. The semifinalist list represents less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors.

To advance to the finals, each semifinalist and his or her high school must submit a detailed scholarship application, in which they provide information about their academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards received.

A semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.

Finalists, of which there are expected to be 15,000, will be notified in February. All National Merit Scholarship winners will be selected from this group of Finalists. Merit Scholar designees are selected on the basis of their skills, accomplishments, and potential for success in rigorous college studies, without regard to gender, race, ethnic origin, or religious preference.

Three types of National Merit Scholarships will be offered in the spring. Every finalist will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit $2,500 scholarships that will be awarded on a state-representational basis. About 1,000 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards will be provided by approximately 230 corporations and business organizations for finalists who meet their specified criteria, such as children of the grantor’s employees or residents of communities where sponsor plants or offices are located.

In addition, about 180 colleges and universities are expected to finance some 4,000 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for finalists who will attend the sponsor institution. Winners will be announced from April through July. These scholarship recipients will join some 338,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the Merit Scholar title.

Semifinalists from the Lawrenceville School are as follows:

843 Dasgupta, Saraswati
161 Fazal, Zain M.
999 Fiske, Benjamin
161 Foster, Charles H.
999 Guo, Emily
450 Jiang, Charlie
303 Kinder, Lucas
169 Li, Brandon Y.
300 Mago, Rishi
000 Ni, Andrew Q.
459 Wang, Cary
522 Wang, Danya
000 Wu, Jacob
712 Xiao, Kevin Y.
999 Xiong, Katherine A.
000 Zhang, Ivy

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