Go to the homepage for the Sylva Herald and Ruralite

SMHS seniors are named National Merit semifinalists
Megan Dellinger

Megan Dellinger

 Two Smoky Mountain High School students are among 16,000 named semifinalists in this year's competition from Merit Scholarships.

Seniors Megan Dellinger, daughter of Robert and Brenda Dellinger of Cullowhee, and Veni Manickam, daughter of Shan and Santhi Manickam, also of Cullowhee, will compete with students across the nation for 7,900 National Merit scholarships worth about $31 million. Several types of awards are available, ranging from a $2,500 award to a four-year scholarships.

National Merit semifinalists make up fewer than 1 percent of each state's high school seniors. The semifinalist talent pool is designated on a state representational basis, and the number of semifinalists in each state is proportional to its percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.

Veni Manickam

Veni Manickam

 Dellinger and Manickam, along with more than 1.2 million students in some 20,000 U.S. high schools, entered the 2001 competition by taking the 1999 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test as high school juniors.

To become finalists and be eligible for Merit awards, Dellinger and Manickam must have an outstanding high school academic record, be endorsed and recommended by their school principal and submit SAT scores that confirm their earlier qualifying test performance.

About 90 percent, or approximately 14,500, of this year's semifinalists are expected to meet the standards required to become finalists, and more than half of the finalists will become Merit Scholarship winners.

Three types of awards will be offered in 2001. Every finalist will be considered for one of 2,500 National Merit $2,500 scholarships, which will be awarded on a state representational basis. Some 400 corporations and businesses will underwrite 1,200 corporate-sponsored awards for finalists who meet specified criteria, such as children of the grantor's employees or residents of plant communities.

In addition, about 200 colleges and universities are expected to provide at least 4,200 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for finalists who will attend the institution financing their award.

The National Merit Scholarship Corp. will release the names of next year's Merit Scholarship winners in April. Those scholarship winners will join more than 193,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the title Merit Scholar since completion of the first National Merit competition in 1956.

Back to Archive: 09/14/00.