Nine Hawaii students are recipients of 2015 National Merit $2,500 scholarships.
Here’s a list of the recipients and their respective high schools and probable career fields:
Isabelle A. Cunitz (environmental engineering), Hawaii Technology Academy in Waipahu; David N. Pang (law — intellectual property), Matthew O. Patterson (aerospace engineering) and Kimberly Peterson (atmospheric science), ‘Iolani School; Jedediah W. Johnson (sustainable energy), Eyrica N. Sumida (neuroscience) and Anna S. Koerner (oncology), Punahou School; Danielle Y. Woods (physics), University Laboratory School: and Emily A. Heydon (ecology), home-schooled student.
The 2015 National Merit Scholarship Competition is financing these single-payment National Merit $2,500 scholarships. Scholars may use their awards at any regionally accredited U.S. college or university.
Winners of college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards are slated to be announced May 27 and July 13. Corporate-sponsored National Merit Scholarship awards, financed by about 200 corporations, company foundations and other business organizations, were announced last month.
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.
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 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.
