National Merit Scholars Award Goes To Cornelius Graduate

CORNELIUS, N.C. — William Amos Hough High School graduate Reilly P. McDowell is one of the final 2021 National Merit Scholarship winners announced this week.

McDowell is among the more than 3,100 announced nationally this year 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.

The W.A. Hough High School grad will study Mathematics at the University of Chicago.

The National Merit winners announced this week will have their scholarships funded by the colleges and universities that they will attend. One hundred and sixty colleges and universities — including 85 private and 75 public schools — took part in the merit scholarship program in 2021.

An earlier round of college-sponsored National Merit scholars was announced in June. This final group is part of the approximately 7,500 National Merit scholarship winners who will be selected by the end of 2021. National Merit scholarships via corporate-sponsored awards and the corporation’s own $2,500 scholarships were announced earlier in the spring.

More than 1.5 million juniors nationally entered the 2021 National Merit scholarship program when they took the 2019 preliminary SAT/National Merit scholarship qualifying test, the corporation said. About 17,000 semifinalists, fewer than 1 percent of the country’s high school seniors, were announced last fall.

Semifinalists had to write an essay and detail their extracurricular activities, awards and leadership positions to become a finalist. About half of the 16,000 finalists will be merit scholars by the end of the year, the corporation said.

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