2 West Chester Students Win National Merit Corporate Scholarships

WEST CHESTER, PA — Two West Chester Area School District high school students are among a select group of students nationwide to earn a prestigious scholarship.

The awards range from $500 to $10,000 per year for up to four years of undergraduate study.

The winners, as well as their school, probable career fields and corporate sponsors, are listed below:

• Claire O. Mobed, East H.S., medicine, Siemens Corporation
• Ananya Muthukrishnan, Henderson H.S., political science, Pfizer Inc.

Corporate sponsors provide scholarships to finalists who are children of their employees, residents of communities the company serves, or who plan to pursue college majors or careers the company wishes to encourage.

Around 1,000 students were selected as corporate-sponsored National Merit winners nationwide, including 44 in Pennsylvania.

Winners were chosen from a pool of around 1.6 million high school juniors who automatically entered into the competition by taking the PSAT in 2017. Around 16,000 semifinalists were chosen from that group in 2018 based on high scores. Semifinalists then had to complete a detailed scholarship application, including an essay, information on leadership and extracurricular activities, and more.

Around 7,600 students will be selected as finalists of some kind in 2019, organizers said, either for a corporate or non-corporate scholarship.