11 HV Students Win National Merit Corporate Scholarships

National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) released the names of the first group of winners in the 64th annual National Merit Scholarship Program in April. Eleven students from Hudson Valley communities were among those named.

More than 1,000 distinguished high school seniors won corporate-sponsored National Merit
Scholarship awards financed by about 160 corporations, company foundations, and other
business organizations.

More than 1.6 million juniors in approximately 22,000 high schools entered the 2019
National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National
Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants.

In September 2018, some 16,000 Semifinalists were designated 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.

• Michelle B. Chen - Suffern High School
• Noah Benson - Briarcliff High School
• Nathan C. Huang - Horace Greeley High School
• Lucas Chu of Irvington - Fordham Prep
• Ruby M. Potash - John Jay High School, Cross River
• Jothi M. Ramaswamy - Lakeland High School
• Victor Yang - Monroe-Woodbury High School
• Nishan G. Shehadeh of Larchmont - Rye Country Day
• Kidar Kooverjee - Blind Brook High School
• Nico A. Cavalluzzi - Scarsdale High School
• Irisa J. Dong - Clarkstown High School South

Scholars were selected from students who advanced to the Finalist level in the National
Merit Scholarship competition and met criteria of their scholarship sponsors. Corporate sponsors
provide National Merit Scholarships for Finalists who are children of their employees, who are
residents of communities the company serves, or who plan to pursue college majors or careers the
sponsor wishes to encourage.

Most of these awards are renewable for up to four years of college undergraduate study
and provide annual stipends that range from $500 to $10,000 per year. Some provide a single
payment between $2,500 and $5,000. Recipients can use their awards at any regionally accredited
U.S. college or university.

This is the first announcement of National Merit Scholars in 2019 by National Merit Scholarship
Corporation. NMSC will name recipients of National Merit® $2500 Scholarships on
May 8, and winners of college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards on June 5 and July 15. By
the conclusion of this year’s competition, about 7,600 academic champions will have won
National Merit Scholarships worth more than $31 million.

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