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Two Hawaii students are among more than 1,000 high school seniors selected for corporate-sponsored National Merit Scholarship awards financed by about 200 corporations, company foundations and other business organizations.
The recipients are Danielle Toshie Sato of Punahou School and Ethan V. Vo of ‘Iolani School. Sato’s probable career field is architecture, and Vo’s is mechanical engineering. Both won the Macy’s Inc. scholarship, which supports children of Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s employees as well as employees themselves.
Recipients of National Merit $2,500 scholarships will be announced May 6, and winners of college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards on May 27 and July 13. By the conclusion of this year’s competition, about 7,600 students will have won about $34 million in scholarships, according to a news release issued by the National Merit Scholarship Corp.
Corporate-sponsored scholars were selected from students who advanced to the finalist level in the 60th annual National Merit Scholarship competition and met criteria of their scholarship sponsors. Corporate sponsors provide National Merit Scholarships for finalists who are children of their employees, who are residents of communities the company serves, or who plan to pursue college majors or careers the sponsor wishes to encourage.
More than 1.4 million juniors entered the 2015 National Merit Scholarship competition when they took the 2013 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants. In September 2014, some 16,000 semifinalists were designated 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 1 percent of the nation’s seniors.
The scholarship winners are candidates judged to have the strongest combination of academic skills and achievements, extracurricular accomplishments and potential for success in rigorous college studies.