Six Area Students Named As National Merit Scholarship Winners

BOISE, ID — The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) announced

over 1,000 additional winners of National Merit Scholarships financed by colleges and
universities.

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These Merit Scholar designees join more than 3,100 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.

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, 160 colleges and universities are sponsoring over 4,100 Merit Scholarship
awards. Sponsor colleges include 85 private and 75 public institutions located in 42 states and the District of Columbia.

This year’s competition for National Merit Scholarships began when over 1.5 million
juniors in about 21,000 high schools took the 2019 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. In September 2020, approximately 17,000 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. From the Semifinalist group, some 16,000 attained Finalist standing, and about half of the Finalists were chosen to receive National Merit Scholarships.

- Capital High School's Katherine Kitsinger will attend Tufts University in Boston with a probable career field in Commercial Art.

- Timberline High School's Chase Thuleen will attend Boston University with a probable career field yet to be decided.

- Eagle High School's Benjamin Black will attend Brigham Young University in Utah with a probable career field in Physics.

- Capital High School's Nathaniel Hartman will attend the University of Idaho with a probable career field in Architecture.

- Boise High School's Veronica Richmond will attend the University of Miami with a probable career field in Biology.

- Rocky Mountain High School's Marcus Heemeyer will attend Brigham Young University with a probable career field in Aerospace Engineering.

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