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Southwestern Student Receives National Merit Scholarship

Pictured is Hannah G. Finson of Lakewood playing her harp. Finson, a senior at Southwestern Central School, has received a National Merit Scholarship to attend Liberty University in the fall. Submitted photo

Hannah G. Finson of Lakewood, a senior at Southwestern Central School, has received a National Merit Scholarship to attend Liberty University in the fall.

Finson plans to study molecular biology in college.

Finson is one of 3,500 winners of National Merit Scholarships nationally. The scholarships are financed by colleges and universities. Officials of each sponsor college selected their scholarship winners from among the finalists in the 2018 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 2018 competition to about 4,000.

More than 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2016 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants. Last fall, 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 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 scores that confirmed the qualifying test performance. From the semifinalist group, some 15,000 met requirements for finalist standing, and about half of the Finalists will be Merit Scholarship winners in 2018.

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