2 Lawrenceville Students Earn National Merit Scholarships

LAWRENCEVILLE, NJ — Two students from Lawrenceville have earned National Merit Scholarships, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced.

A student at Notre Dame High School earned a college scholarship, while a student at Lawrence High School earned a corporate scholarship.

Notre Dame’s Molly C. Hart earned a national merit scholarship from the University of Alabama. Hart will likely pursue a career in neuroscience.

Lawrence High School’s Ian Wang earned a national merit scholarship from Bristol-Myers Squibb. Wang will likely pursue a career in aerospace engineering.

Hart is one of 7,600 high school seniors who will receive National Merit Scholarships for college undergraduate study worth over $30 million. Earlier this spring, NMSC announced winners of corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards and National Merit $2,500 Scholarships.

Funding for the National Merit Corporate Scholarships is provided by corporate organizations that represent nearly all sectors of American industry. Sponsors from the business community have underwritten awards offered in all 65 competitions, expending or committing approximately $820 million to support the intellectual development of the nation’s scholastically talented youth.

Over 1.5 million juniors in approximately 21,000 high schools entered the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2018 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants. Last fall, approximately 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 first 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. 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, some 15,000 met requirements for Finalist standing, and about half of the Finalists will be Merit Scholarship winners in 2020.

NMSC, a not-for-profit corporation that operates without government assistance, was established in 1955 to conduct the National Merit Scholarship Program. The majority of National Merit Scholarships provided each year are made possible by the support of approximately 400 independent corporate and college sponsors. These sponsors join NMSC in its efforts to enhance educational opportunities for America’s scholastically talented youth and to encourage the pursuit of academic excellence.