Claudia Garcia, Reporter
@cgarciacourant
Each year about 2 million juniors take the PSAT. For most students, this exam is only a preliminary test for the SAT, but for the top one percent of examinees, it’s an opportunity to win the National Merit Scholarship. The National Merit Scholarship is an annual competition held by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) in which about 50,000 students who score in the 99th percentile on PSAT complete a multi-step application process to win money directly offered by colleges and universities.
For every 50,000 students who qualify for this scholarship, about 34,000 get letters of commendation that they can include in college applications. The remaining 16,000 students who rank in the top 1 percent are named semi-finalists.
Senior Bella Defelice was named a National Merit Semifinalist and is currently applying for the next stage of the program. “It’s like a competition but you don’t know who your opponents are,” Bella said. After completing the PSAT, students must wait until the beginning of the next year to find out if they have been nominated as semi-finalists for the National Merit Scholarship. “Around October of your senior year, they send your guidance counselor an email, and then your guidance counselor tells you that you are a National Merit Semifinalist,” senior Sophie Martinez said, another National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist. After this, semi-finalists must complete an online application to enter the selection process and become finalists.
The semi-finalists must meet numerous requirements to move onto the next phase of the program. “They contact your guidance counselor and then you go to their website and create a profile and basically apply to be a finalist,” Bella said.
In late January 2023, a committee of experienced college admission officers and high school counselors will meet to decide who this year’s winners are. On February 6, NMSC will contact the school principals of the students who have been selected as finalists and the final phase of the program will begin.
The committee will evaluate each of the applications, which are composed of information provided by both the students and their respective schools. This includes an academic
record, a school letter of recommendation, a student essay, information about extracurricular activities, and the PSAT scores.
Sophie is currently going through the application process. “They want to know what activities you do, what jobs you have, in general just facts about yourself” Sophie said, “The application also requires one long essay, which is similar to the personal statement used for college applications”. The program offers three different types of scholarships. The first one is a single-payment National Merit $2,500 Scholarship, available to all nominated finalists. 950 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship are also offered, for the finalists who meet the criteria of a company or business, and finally 3,800 college-sponsored Merit Scholarships for the finalists who will attend the institutions of the sponsors.
Becoming a winner of the National Merit Scholarship means being one of only 7,500 students who have managed to exceed all expectations and meet all the necessary requirements. However, becoming a semifinalist should still be considered a great merit, since it means belonging to the top 1 percent. “Honestly, I’m proud of myself because this is the one thing that I’ve been focusing on,” Bella said.
