NATIONAL MERIT® SCHOLARSHIP

National Merit® Scholarship Corporation recently announced Emmett B. Hawkins, of Emmaus, a student at Moravian Academy, Bethlehem, as the winner of the National Merit Purdue University Scholarship.

Hawkins will likely pursue a career in engineering.

The scholarship is among more than 540 of National Merit® Scholarships financed by colleges and universities.

Officials of each sponsor college select their scholarship winners from among the finalists in the National Merit® scholarship program who will attend their institution. College-sponsored awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship.

This year 173 colleges and universities are sponsoring 4,100 merit scholarship awards. Sponsor colleges include 95 private and 78 public institutions located in 43 states and the District of Columbia.

This final group of winners brings the number of 2019 National Merit Scholars to more than 7,600. These distinguished high school graduates will receive scholarships for undergraduate study worth more than $31 million.

In addition to the college-sponsored awards, two other types of National Merit scholarships are offered – 2,500 $2,500 scholarships, for which all finalists compete and more than 1,000 corporate-sponsored awards for finalists who meet criteria specified by organizations granting the award.

This year’s competition began when more than 1.6 million juniors in approximately 22,000 high schools took the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Qualifying Test or PSAT/NMSQT, which served as an initial screen of program entrants.

In September 2018, about 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 become a finalist, each semifinalist had to complete a detailed scholarship application, which included writing an essay, describing leadership positions and contributions in school and community activities, showing an outstanding academic record and being endorsed and recommended by a high school official. Semifinalists also must take the SAT® and earn scores confirming their performances on the initial qualifying test. From the semifinalist group, about 15,000 students achieved finalist standing and about half of the finalists were chosen to receive National Merit® scholarships.

Purdue University is a state-assisted university system on five campuses

The campus is located in West Lafayette, Ind.