Westfield Student Wins Corporate-Sponsored National Merit Scholarship

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced the names of the first group of winners in the 60th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

A number of students from across New Jersey won corporate-sponsored National Merit Scholarship awards, financed by about 200 corporations, company foundations and other organizations, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) said.

More than 1.4 million juniors in about 22,000 high schools entered the 2015 National Merit Scholarship competition when they took the 2013 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test and some 16,000 semifinalists were designated on a state-representational basis in September 2014.

Local student Jorge A. Ledesma, of Westfield High School, was selected as a recipient of a corporate-sponsored National Merit Scholarship. According to the NMSC, his probable career field is government science.

Ledesma was awarded the National Merit Alfred A. Davis/ASC Partners, LLC Scholarship. ASC Partners creates and distributes digital content, including government and finanicial information. According to the NMSC, one of ASC Partners’ principals, Stephen Carr Davis, is the grandson of Alfred A. Davis, a creator of the National Distillers Distributors Foundation, one of the earliest providers of National Merit Scholarships.