Megan Friederichs, Photographer

NationalMerit.doc

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Students part of one percent to Qualify

For many students in the Stillwater district it is very important for them to achieve good grades. Four seniors have qualified for the national merit scholarship. Those who have qualified are competing for thousands of dollars in college scholarships.

Over 1.5 million students apply for the national merit scholarship every year, among them only one percent of them are accepted as finalist. This year Stillwater has four students who were among 15,000 to qualify. There are approximately 7,600 scholarships, but total in over 33 million dollars.

For many it is quiet an honor to receive the national merit scholarship.

Noah Rue, “I was very pleased to have received finalist status both because it was very helpful in college applications and because it can help pay some tuition costs.”

It can also be a rather stressful event to be a finalist because it is such a hard thing to get and there’s a lot that rides on it.

Monica Anuforo said, In my essay to become a finalist, I had accidentally made a grammatical mistake. When I was finally notified of my finalist status, I was overjoyed to find that the deciders were able to overlook my confusion over the words “much” and “many”.

Although the stress can be terrifying on if you become a finalist or not knowing you were one of a very tiny number of students to make it even to the semi finalist level is an accomplishment.

Andrea Rustad said, “I was very surprised and excited! I didn’t even know that I was being considered for it, and then as I continued to advance it was very exciting and I was very surprised.”

After going through this process the candidates have great insight and advice to those who are potential going to qualify.

Anuforo said, “Should you advance to semi-finalist status, don’t be deathly afraid of the SAT like I was. Stress and standardized testing often go hand-in-hand, but it doesn’t have to be this way!”

Although some of the candidates here at the high school may not exactly know what they want to do as a profession many have at least a general idea of what they have an interest in and plan to go into.

Anuforo is interested in going into computer science or computer engineering, while Rustad is considering going into medicine. Rustad is also interested in science and helping people and believes that going into Medicine would be a good way to combine the two.

The National Merit scholarship isn’t something you apply for it’s granted to those who test well on the PSAT, from there if you become a semifinalist you are asked to take the SAT.

“First they choose people with a certain score on the PSAT, then if you are selected you have to take the SAT and write an essay and send in grades and information about yourself, pretty much like any scholarship.” said Rustad.

With the price of colleges rather high many people are interested in getting any way of reduction they can. For the students who have qualified for the competitive national merit scholarship a little ease has come knowing they can get thousands of dollars in reduction. Out of the over 1.5 million students in the U.S. who took the test, Stillwater is honored to say that we have four of the 1% of students who have qualified as semi finalist.