Council Rock Student Awarded National Merit Scholarship

NEWTOWN, PA — A senior at Council Rock North High School has won a college-sponsored National Merit Scholarship, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced on Wednesday.

• Alexander Ethan Smith, a student at Council Rock North High School and a resident of Washington Crossing, has been awarded the National Merit Purdue University Scholarship. Alexander is considering a career in computer engineering.

Officials from each sponsor college selected their scholarship winners from among the finalists in the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program who plan to attend their institution. The awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship. An additional group of scholars will be announced in July, bringing the total number of college-sponsored Merit Scholarship recipients in the 2025 competition to more than 3,600.

This year, 146 higher education institutions are underwriting Merit Scholarship awards through the program. Sponsor colleges and universities include 74 private and 72 public institutions located in 42 states and the District of Columbia.

High school juniors entered the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. Last fall, more than 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 or ACT scores that confirmed the qualifying test performance. From the semifinalist group, over 15,000 met requirements for finalist standing, and about half of the finalists will be Merit Scholarship winners in 2025.