Students From Orland Park Win National Merit Scholarship

ORLAND PARK, IL — The next group of 2021 National Merit Scholarship winners includes a high school student from Orland Park.

The latest National Merit winners from Illinois join more than 3,100 announced nationally in June to receive between $500 and $2,000 scholarships from colleges and universities across the country, the National Merit Scholarship Corp. said in a news release Monday.

National Merit Scholarship winners from Orland Park in 2021 include:

• Michael A. Trombetta, of Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, Aurora. National Merit University of New Mexico Scholarship. Probable career field: Nuclear Engineering.
• Ella Grace McDevitt, of Carl Sandburg High School, National Merit University of Missouri - Columbia. Probable career field: Journalism.

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 final group of winners brings the number of 2021 National Merit Scholars to more than 7,500. These distinguished high school graduates will receive scholarships for undergraduate study worth a total of nearly $30 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 about 1,000 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for finalists who met criteria specified by their granter organizations.

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, 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 from 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.