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Three students from Cape Coral among college-sponsored National Merit Scholarship winners

By Staff | Jun 4, 2024

Today, National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced over 2,900 winners of National Merit Scholarships financed by U.S. colleges and universities.

Officials of each sponsor college selected their scholarship winners from among the finalists in the 2024 National Merit Scholarship Program who plan to attend their institution. These 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 2024 competition to more than 3,600.

This year, 149 higher education institutions are underwriting Merit Scholarship awards through the National Merit Scholarship Program. Sponsor colleges and universities include 77 private and 72 public institutions located in 42 states and the District of Columbia.

College-sponsored Merit Scholarship winners announced today are a part of the distinguished group of more than 6,870 high school seniors who will receive National Merit Scholarships for college undergraduate study worth nearly $26 million. Earlier this spring, NMSC announced winners of corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards and National Merit

$2,500 Scholarships.

High school juniors entered the 2024 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2022 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. Last fall, more than 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 first 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 or ACT scores that confirmed the qualifying test performance. From the semifinalist group, over 15,000 met requirements for finalist standing, and about half of the

finalists will be Merit Scholarship winners in 2024.

Among the local winners are:

• Patrick R. Dendis of Cape Coral who attends Bishop Verot High School in Fort Myers. His probable career field is in mathematics. He received a National Merit University of Florida scholarship.

• Jakob A. Musich of Cape Coral who attends Dunbar High School in fort Myers. His probable career field is in mechanical engineering. He received a National Merit University of Florida scholarship.

• Gabriel C. Wright of Cape Coral who attends Cape Coral High School. His probable career field psychiatry. He also received a National Merit University of Florida scholarship.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation is located at 1560 Sherman Ave., Suite 200, Evanston, Illinois 60201-4897. Call 847-866-5100 or visit www.nationalmerit.org for additional information.