Morristown-Beard Senior Named National Merit Semifinalist

Morristown-Beard School senior Matthew Lindberg ’19 of Morristown is in some pretty elite company after being named a semifinalist in the annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

The pool of 16,000 semifinalists nationwide represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors. The group was selected out of 1.6 million students for earning the highest scores on the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT).

Lindberg and the other semifinalists now have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,500 Merit Scholarship Awards worth more than $31 million that will be offered in the spring. To become a finalist, a semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by the school principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student's earlier qualifying test performance.

As a top robotics competitor, Lindberg has won the New Jersey Robotics Championship and competed in the VEX World Robotics Championships for the past three years. Last spring, his team recorded a top 10 finish at the World Championships, placing 7thout of more than 500 international teams.

At Morristown-Beard School, Lindberg is a member of the winter and spring track & field teams, earning All-Conference Honorable Mention last year. He serves as vice president of the Lifting Club, and is also a member of Spectrum, the School’s Gay/Straight Alliance. He hopes to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering in college.

The group of semifinalists will be whittled down to finalists in February, 2019. National Merit Scholarship winners will be announced in April.