The National Merit Scholarship Corporation on Monday announced approximately 750 additional winners of National Merit Scholarships financed by colleges and universities, including several awarded to students from Flower Mound.
These Merit Scholar designees join more than 3,000 other college-sponsored award recipients who were announced in June. Officials of each sponsor college selected their scholarship winners from among the Finalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program who will attend their institution, according to a NMSC news release. College-sponsored awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship.
This final group of winners brings the number of 2023 National Merit Scholars to more than 7,140. These distinguished high school graduates will receive scholarships for undergraduate study worth a total of nearly $28 million. In addition to college-sponsored awards, two other types of National Merit Scholarships were offered — 2,500 National Merit $2,500 Scholarships, for which all Finalists competed, and about 840 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for Finalists who met criteria specified by their grantor organizations.
The following local students received college-sponsored Merit Scholarships:
- Riddhl Panthl, Flower Mound High School, University of Texas at Dallas
- Rahul Ramesh, Marcus High School, Michigan State University
- Annabelle Thomas, FMHS, Colorado State University
This year’s competition for National Merit Scholarships began when high school juniors took the 2021 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants, according to the news release. In September 2022, more than 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 become a Finalist, each Semifinalist had to complete a detailed scholarship application, which included writing an essay, describing leadership positions and contributions in school and community activities, showing an outstanding academic record, and being endorsed and recommended by a high school official. Semifinalists also had to take the SAT or ACT and earn scores that confirmed their performance on the initial qualifying test. From the Semifinalist group, over 15,000 attained Finalist standing, and about half of the Finalists were chosen to receive National Merit Scholarships.
