McLean Seniors Win College-Sponsored Merit Scholarships

MCLEAN, VA—Five students from McLean earned college-sponsored National Merit Scholarships among thousands of others across the country. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced the 3,500 college-sponsored scholarship recipients Wednesday, June 5.

John D. Beckner of Langley High School received a scholarship from Northwestern University but is undecided on what to study. Kristen E. Waagner of McLean High School also plans to attend Northwestern University to pursue theater. The three other McLean winners are from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Walker T. Haynes will study at the University of Chicago, Anica L. Huang will pursue biomedical engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University and Jocelyn Liu will study electrical engineering at the University of Southern California.

Two other winners, Helen J. Ganley and Maren L. Kranking, attend McLean High School but live in other towns. In all, 50 Virginia students earned the college-sponsored scholarships.

The scholarships give students $500 to $2,000 each year for the undergraduate institution they plan to attend. This year, 173 higher education institutions in 43 states and the District of Columbia sponsored the awards.

The National Merit Scholarship program includes awards sponsored by colleges, businesses and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation itself. Corporate-sponsored and $2,500 National Merit-sponsored scholarship winners were announced earlier in the spring.

Over 1.6 million high school students were entered for the 2019 scholarships by taking the Preliminary SAT (PSAT) as juniors. That list was narrowed down to 16,000 semifinalists in the fall. Semifinalists were the highest-scoring students in each state.

To advance to the finalist stage, semifinalists submitted a scholarship application with an essay and information about their extracurricular activities, awards and leadership positions. They must also have an outstanding record, SAT scores that reinforce their qualifying PSAT scores and a recommendation from a high school official. Around 15,000 met requirements to become finalists.

A total of 7,600 high school seniors will receive over $31 million in National Merit Scholarships in 2019. The next round of college-sponsored scholarship recipients will be announced on July 15.