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Coral Springs Students Named National Merit Scholarship Winners

by Sharon Aron Baron May 8, 2019

by Sharon Aron Baron May 8, 2019 24 views

Coral Springs Students Named National Merit Scholarship Winners

Devin Katz and Bowen Wu.

By: Sharon Aron Baron

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation has announced this year’s $2,500 Scholarship winners and two students from Broward County Public Schools in Coral Springs have been named.

Devin Katz from Coral Glades High School and Bowen Wu from J.P. Taravella High School were chosen from a talent pool of more than 15,000 Finalists in the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program.

National Merit $2,500 Scholarship winners are the Finalists in each state judged to have the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills, and potential for success in rigorous college studies. The number of winners named in each state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the nation’s graduating high school seniors.

These Scholars were selected by a committee of college admissions officers and high school counselors, who appraised a substantial amount of information submitted by both the Finalists and their high schools: the academic record, including difficulty level of subjects studied and grades earned; scores from two standardized tests; contributions and leadership in school and community activities; an essay written by the Finalist; and a recommendation written by a high school official.

This year’s National Merit Scholarship Program began in October 2017 when over 1.6 million juniors in approximately 22,000 high schools took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants.

Last fall, the highest-scoring participants in each state, representing less than one percent of the nation’s high school seniors, were named Semifinalists on a state-representational basis. Only these 16,000 Semifinalists had an opportunity to continue in the competition. From the Semifinalist group, some 15,000 students met the very high academic standards and other requirements to advance to the Finalist level of the competition. By the conclusion of the 2019 program, about 7,600 Finalists will have earned the “Merit Scholar” title and received a total of over $31 million in college scholarships.

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Sharon Aron Baron

Editor of Talk Media and writer for Coral Springs Talk. CST was created in 2012 to provide News, Views, and Entertainment for the residents of Coral Springs and the rest of South Florida.