Plainfield High School-Central Campus senior Eric Frosch and Plainfield North High School seniors Robert Childs and Bryce Roberts are among about 15,000 National Merit Scholarship 2024 finalists nationwide.
The trio will compete for 7,140 National Merit Scholarship awards, worth about $28 million.
Frosch, Childs, and Roberts learned they were semifinalists in October 2023. About half of the Finalists will be named National Merit Scholars.
This is the 69th year of the prestigious program, which honors academically talented high school seniors.
To become a National Merit Finalist, students must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by the school principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier qualifying performance.
The finalist and a school official must also submit a detailed scholarship application, including the student’s self-descriptive essay and information about the student’s participation and leadership in school and community activities.
About 1.3 million high school juniors in about 21,000 high schools nationwide entered the 2024 National Merit Program by taking the 2022 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.
The pool of semifinalists comprises less than one percent of all United States high school seniors and includes the highest scoring entrants in each state.
National Merit Finalists will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit $2,500 scholarships.
About 160 corporations and businesses will also give about 840 corporate-sponsored scholarships to finalists who meet those organizations’ criteria.
And, about 160 colleges and universities are expected to finance about 3,800 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for Finalists attending their sponsoring institution.
The 2024 Merit Scholarship winners will be announced between April-July 2024. They will join nearly 375,000 other distinguished students who have earned the title of National Merit Scholar.