10 Butler or Warren county students receive National Merit scholarships

They join 20 others announced last spring
Students named National Merit Semifinalists are eligible to compete for scholarships later in their senior year.

Students named National Merit Semifinalists are eligible to compete for scholarships later in their senior year.

Ten of the most academically advanced high school graduates from Butler and Warren counties are getting scholarships to help pay college expense.

They join 20 others who this spring received corporate- or National Merit Corp.- sponsored scholarships after being named National Merit finalists last December.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation has released the last two lists of finalists who are received college scholarships of between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study.

For this year’s competition, 146 colleges and universities – including 74 private and 72 public – are sponsoring about 3,700 awards.

Recipients are among 15,000 students that made it to the finalist level based on their scores on the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualify Tests, taken as juniors. They make up fewer than one percent of the nation’s top-performing high school graduates.

They are among about 7,100 students who will have received National Merit, corporate, or college-sponsored scholarships from specific schools, totaling $26 million.

Since the non-profit National Merit Scholarship Corp. was formed in 1955, about 389,000 students have received scholarships worth $1.4 billion.

The following 10 students are receiving National Merit Scholarship Corp. scholarships of $2,500. They are listed by high school, and include the student’s possible career field. Some Cincinnati area private high schools are included because the recipient attends the school:

Archbishop Moeller: Alexander Rose, University of Alabama, mechanical engineering

Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy, Timothy McCoy, Purdue University, engineering, lives in Fairfield

Homeschool: Charis Ng, Liberty University, biomedicine, lives in Mason

Kings: Derek Harris, Purdue, computer science; Lusas Webster, University of Alabama, computer science

Lakota West: Prithika Padmanabhan, Case Western Reserve University, biochemistry

Mason: Samuel Aronoff, Rochester Institute of Technology, software engineering

Seven Hills: Sophia Schuermeyer, Emory University, environmental policy

St. Xavier: Ryan Kos, Purdue University, aerospace engineering, lives in Liberty Twp.

Talawanda: Victor Li, Purdue University, chemical engineering

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