Brookfield Student Awarded National Merit Scholarship

BROOKFIELD, CT — A student from town has won a National Merit Scholarship, which are financed by United States colleges and universities, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced this week.

She is from a group of more than 3,200 winners who were selected by officials of each sponsor college from among the Finalists in the 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program who plan to attend their institution.

"These awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship," wrote the NMSC in a statement. "An additional group of Scholars will be announced in July, bringing the total number of college-sponsored Merit Scholarship recipients in the 2017 competition to approximately 4,000."

The Brookfield winner is Emily Lazorchak who won a National Merit Tufts University Scholarship and plans to enter the field of cell biology.

"This year, 182 higher education institutions are underwriting Merit Scholarship awards through the National Merit Scholarship Program," wrote the corporation. "Sponsor colleges and universities include 103 private and 79 public institutions located in 44 states and the District of Columbia."

A total of about 7,500 high school seniors will receive National Merit Scholarships for college undergraduate study, worth a total of more than $32 million.

From the National Merit Scholarship Corporation:

Over 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2017 National Merit Scholarship competition when they took the 2015 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. Last fall, approximately 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 compete for Merit Scholarship awards, Semifinalists first had to advance to the Finalist level of the competition by fulfilling additional requirements. Each Semifinalist was asked to submit a detailed scholarship application, which included writing an essay and providing information about extracurricular activities, awards, and leadership positions. Semifinalists also had to have an outstanding academic record, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, and earn SAT® scores that confi rmed the qualifying test performance. From the Semifinalist group, some 15,000 met requirements for Finalist standing, and about half of the Finalists will be Merit Scholarship winners in 2017.

NMSC, a not-for-profi t corporation that operates without government assistance, was established in 1955 to conduct the National Merit Scholarship Program. The majority of National Merit Scholarships provided each year are made possible by the support of approximately 420 independent corporate and college sponsors. These sponsors join NMSC in its efforts to enhance educational opportunities for America’s scholastically talented youth and to encourage the pursuit of academic excellence.

Image via Shutterstock