Five Additional Duval County Public Schools' Students Receive College-Sponsored National Merit® Scholarships
Jacksonville, FL - Five Duval County Public Schools' students were among the additional 2,000 winners of College-Sponsored National Merit Scholarships announced today by National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC). These Merit Scholar designees join over 2,500 other college sponsored award recipients who were announced in late May.
The selected students are as follows:
Stanton College Preparatory School
- Jacob R. Higdon, National Merit University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Scholarship;
- Brandon J. Holton, National Merit University of Florida Scholarship;
- Curran W. Kuehl, National Merit University of Florida Scholarship;
Paxon School for Advanced Studies
- Christina D. Savvidis, National Merit University of Central Florida Scholarship; and
- Jonathan B. Winn, National Merit University of Central Florida Scholarship
Officials of each sponsor college selected their scholarship winners from among the finalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program who will attend their institution. 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 year, 197 colleges and universities are sponsoring about 4,600 Merit Scholarship awards. Sponsor colleges include 117 private and 80 public institutions located in 45 states and the District of Columbia.
This final group of winners brings the number of 2012 National Merit Scholars to approximately 8,100. These distinguished high school graduates will receive scholarships for undergraduate study worth a total of more than $35 million. In addition to college-sponsored awards, two other types of National Merit Scholarships were offered - 2,500 National Merit® $2500 Scholarships, for which all finalists competed, and more than 1,000 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for finalists who met criteria specified by their grantor organizations.
2012 National Merit Scholarship Competition
This year's competition for National Merit Scholarships began when approximately 1.5 million juniors in some 22,000 high schools took the 2010 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. In September 2011, about 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 submit a detailed scholarship application, which included writing an essay and 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 and earn scores that confirmed their performance on the initial qualifying test. From the semifinalist group, about 15,000 attained finalist standing, and more than half of the Finalists were chosen to receive National Merit Scholarships.
NMSC, a not-for-profit corporation that operates without government assistance, was established in 1955 to conduct the National Merit Scholarship Program. Over the past 57 years, more than 292,000 outstanding young men and women have won National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $1 billion. The majority of awards offered each year are underwritten by approximately 440 independent corporate and college sponsors that support NMSC's efforts to recognize scholastically talented youth and encourage the pursuit of academic excellence.
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