Local Students Named National Merit Award Scholarship Winners

NORTH KINGSTOWN, RI—The last group of National Merit Scholarship winners has been announced today and on the list are two students from North Kingstown.

A total of four winners in Rhode Island were named:

Lydia J. Sgouros, of North Kingstown High School. She plans to study engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Griffin J. Rademacher, of North Kingstown and graduate of Rocky Hill School in East Greenwich. He plans to study environmental engineering at Northeastern University in Boston.

Quentin B. Duyck, of Barrington High School. He will study electrical engineering at Texas A&M University.

Aidan A. Kendra, of Cranston and student at Bishop Hendricken High School. He will attend University of Rochester and plans to study biomedicine.

According to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, the final group of winners brings the number of 2016 winners to more than 7,300. Each will receive scholarships for undergraduate study at one of more than 175 public and private colleges and universities in 45 states and the District of Columbia.

To get the prestigious National Merit Scholarship, students must undergo an extensive screening process beginning in their junior year of high school with a test. Sixteen-thousand semifinalists were picked in September of 2015 and they went on to complete a detailed application that included an essay. That, along with their academic record, SAT scores and other measures, let to 15,000 finalists and about half were chose for scholarships.

The corporation, in a news release, stressed the importance of understanding that merit scholarship winners are awarded for individual excellence and shouldn't be considered as a measurement to compare high schools.

"The program does not measure the quality or effectiveness of education within a school, system, or state," they said.

Each student will get a gift for their education of $500 to $2,000 annually for up to four years of study.