6 Radnor-Area Seniors Win College-Sponsored Merit Scholarships

RADNOR, PA — Six high school seniors in the Radnor area ;were recently named winners of National Merit Scholarships financed by U.S. colleges and universities.

These six are among more than 3,300 winners nationwide.

Below are details on the Radnor-area winners:

Sara Takenaka, Bryn Mawr — Radnor High School, Radnor

• Probable career field: Chemical Engineering
• National Merit Tufts University Scholarship
  • Tufts University, located 6 miles from Boston, offers the personal attention of a small college and the options of a complex university. Among the options available to the 4,400 undergraduates in liberal arts and engineering are self-designed majors, the experimental college, independent study, an honors program, double-degree programs, internships, study abroad, a semester in Washington, and ROTC. Over 150 clubs, organizations and sports reinforce the balance at Tufts.

Andrew M. Feng, Radnor — The Haverford School, Haverford

• Probable career field: Economics
• National Merit Boston College Scholarship
  • Boston College, a coed Jesuit university located in Chestnut Hill, MA, consists of 13 schools, colleges, and institutions and includes colleges of Arts and Sciences, Management, Education, and Nursing. Undergraduate enrollment is 4,400 men and 3,900 women (65% resident, 35% commuters). Boston College offers honors programs in all divisions and strong interdepartmental programs. Sixty-five percent of graduates seek advanced degrees. The college awards professional, master's, and doctoral degrees.

John M. Lindgren, Radnor — Radnor High School, Radnor

• Probable career field: Military Service
• National Merit Vanderbilt University Scholarship
  • Vanderbilt University is an independent, privately supported university located in Nashville, Tennessee. It was founded in 1873 and is named after Cornelius Vanderbilt who provided funds to establish the university. The university offers undergraduate programs in Liberal Arts, Music, Engineering, Education, and Human Development. Graduate programs are offered in the Humanities, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Business, Engineering, Nursing, Divinity, Law, Medicine, and Public Policy

Riley P. Brenan, St. Davids — Radnor High School, Radnor

• Probable career field: Neuroscience
• National Merit Tulane University Scholarship
  • Tulane is a privately endowed, nonsectarian university offering a wide range of undergraduate, professional, and graduate courses in 10 divisions. Founded in 1834, it is located in the university section of New Orleans. Enrolled are 8,435 undergraduates, 3,216 graduate students, and 1,951 in professional schools. All divisions are coeducational.

Gwendolyn B. Pohlmann, Newtown Square — Academy Of Notre Dame De Namur, Villanova

• Probable career field: Ecology
• National Merit University Of Miami Scholarship
  • The University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, is a private, independent, international university. About 14,000 students from 50 states and over 100 countries are enrolled. Undergraduate programs are offered in over 50 areas of study, and there are over 100 programs offered at the master's and doctoral levels. The libraries contain more than one million volumes. The Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science is one of 11 academic divisions of the university.

Ryan Cohen, Villanova — Harriton High School, Rosemont

• Probable career field: Mathematics
• National Merit Pennsylvania State University Scholarship
  • Penn State offers a breadth of academic programs as diverse as the interests of its nearly 80,000 undergraduate and graduate students university-wide. Students can start as freshmen at 20 of 24 campuses statewide, and choose from more than 180 Baccalaureate and Associate degree programs.

Officials of each sponsor college selected their scholarship winners from among the finalists in the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program who plan to attend their institution.

These awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship.

Sponsor colleges and universities include 92 private and 75 public institutions located in 43 states and the District of Columbia.

Additional recipients of college-sponsored awards will be announced on July 13.

By the conclusion of this year’s competition, about 7,600 academic champions will have won National Merit Scholarships worth more than $30 million.

College-sponsored Merit Scholarship winners announced today are a part of the distinguished group of about 7,600 high school seniors who will receive National Merit Scholarships for college undergraduate study worth over $30 million.

More than 1.5 million juniors in about 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.