Congratulations to Cory McCartan for being named a National Merit $2500 Scholarship winner.   This year’s competition began in October 2013 when 1.4 million juniors in 22,000 high schools took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/MNSQT), 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 nation’s high school seniors, were named Semifinalists on a state-representational basis.  Only these 16,000 Semifinalists had an opportunity to continue in the competition.

From the Semifinalist group, 15,000 students met the very high academic standards and other requirements to advance to the Finalist level of the competition.  By the conclusion of the 2015 program, about 7,600 Finalists will have earned the “Merit Scholar” title and received a total of about $34 million in college scholarships.