3 Plainfield Seniors Named National Merit Scholarship Finalists

PLAINFIELD, IL — Plainfield East High School seniors Saumya Madhan, Jeffrey Tilkin, and Ibrahim Yousuf have been named 2021 National Merit Scholarship finalists.

The PEHS trio is among about 15,000 finalists nationwide who will compete for 7,600 National Merit Scholarship awards worth about $30 million. The awards will be announced in spring. This is the 66th year of the prestigious program, which honors academically talented high school seniors.

To become a National Merit Finalist, students must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by the school principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier qualifying performance.

About 1.5 million high school juniors in over 21,000 high schools nationwide entered the 2021 National Merit Program by taking the 2019 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

National Merit Finalists will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit $2,500 scholarships. About 220 corporations and businesses will also give about 1,000 corporate-sponsored scholarships to finalists who meet those criteria. And, about 180 colleges and universities are expected to finance about 4,100 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for finalists attending their sponsoring institution.

The 2021 Merit Scholarship winners will be announced between April-July. They will join more than 353,000 other distinguished students who have earned the title of National Merit Scholar.

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