Wake Students Earn National Merit $2,500 Scholarships
May 20, 2004 - Thirteen graduating high school seniors from the Wake County Public School System have earned National Merit $2,500 Scholarships.
The students include Alexandra Balaban of Apex High; Mollie Tucker of Athens Drive High; Julia Bobbitt, Victoria Ding and Katherine Southern of Broughton High; Jeffrey Clement and Megan Tooley of Green Hope High; Robin Chisnell, Ria Dutta, Eric Liu, William Rearick, Helen Rittelmeyer and Jeremy Schwartz of Enloe High.
The students were chosen from approximately 15,000 finalists in the 2004 National Merit Scholar Program. Students who earned the scholarships were judged to have the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills and potential for success in rigorous college studies.
All finalists competed for one of the National Merit $2,500 Scholarships, and the number of winners named in a state is based on the state's percentage of national total of graduating high school seniors.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation underwrites about 90 percent of the single-payment National Merit $2,500 Scholarships with its own funds. Corporate and business sponsors in the National Merit Scholarship Program are supporting the remainder of the awards.
Balaban's scholarship was sponsored by Weyerhaeuser Company Foundation. Liu's scholarship was sponsored by Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, Inc. Rearick's scholarship was sponsored by J.P. Morgan Chase and Company. Other WCPSS students' scholarships were funded by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.
The competition for Merit Scholarship awards being offered this spring began in October 2002 when more than 1.3 million juniors in more than 21,000 U.S. high schools took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants. Last fall, the highest-scoring participants in each state, representing less than one percent of the state's seniors, were named semifinalists on a state representational basis. Only these 16,000 semifinalists had an opportunity to continue in the competition.
Approximately 90 percent of the semifinalists met the very high academic standards and other requirements to advance to the finalist level, and it is from this group that all Merit Scholarship winners are being chosen.
-wcpss-