Vienna Seniors Earn College-Sponsored Merit Scholarships

VIENNA, VA—Four students from Vienna have 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.

Samuel H. Cohen and Elizabeth R. Press of James Madison High School were among the winners. Cohen will study aerospace engineering at Purdue University, while Press will pursue economics at the University of Chicago. The other winners are Maren L. Kranking of McLean High School and Matthew X. Chen of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Kranking will study graphic design at Northwestern University and Chen will pursue molecular biology at the University of Chicago.

Madison High School had another winner, Sarah E. Conforti, but she lives in Oakton. 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.