Carson High seniors named National Merit Scholars

Carson High seniors Megan Owens and Emma Rosen were selected as college-sponsored National Merit Scholarship winners.

They are among 3,500 college-sponsored National Merit Scholarship winners from across the country. College-sponsored National Merit Scholarship winners are provided $500 to $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study.

More than 1.6 million juniors in approximately 22,000 high schools entered the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program

entrants. Last fall, approximately 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 scores that confirmed the qualifying test performance. From the semifinalist group, some 15,000 met requirements for finalist standing, and about half of the finalists will be Merit Scholarship winners in 2019.

Owens will attend the University of Nevada, Reno and Rosen will attend St. Olaf College, a liberal arts college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America located in Northfield, Minn.