The National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced 1,900 additional national college scholarship winners for 2010 on Monday and 10 HISD graduates are on the list.
Of those, five are from Bellaire High School; two are from the DeBakey High School for Health Professions and there is one each from Carnegie Vanguard, Lamar and Westside. Here is the list by high school:
Bellaire High School
Karen Ding
Probable career field: Medicine/Health
NATIONAL MERIT RICE UNIVERSITY SCHOLARSHIP
Lumeng Li
Probable career field: Medicine
NATIONAL MERIT UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON SCHOLARSHIP
Ian C. Mauzy
Probable career field: Computer Science
NATIONAL MERIT RICE UNIVERSITY SCHOLARSHIP
Mengwei Ni
Probable career field: Bioengineering
NATIONAL MERIT RICE UNIVERSITY SCHOLARSHIP
Wilma Qiu
Probable career field: Business
NATIONAL MERIT EMORY UNIVERSITY SCHOLARSHIP
Carnegie Vanguard High School
Larissa B. Little
Probable career field: Engineering
NATIONAL MERIT FRANKLIN W. OLIN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING SCHOLARSHIP
DeBakey High School for Health Professions
Alexander S. Kortum
Probable career field: Physics
NATIONAL MERIT RICE UNIVERSITY SCHOLARSHIP
Fatima Syed
Probable career field: Medicine
NATIONAL MERIT UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON SCHOLARSHIP
Lamar High School
Tonhu Q. Nguyen
Probable career field: Chemical Engineering
NATIONAL MERIT RICE UNIVERSITY SCHOLARSHIP
Westside High School
Yu-Di Lin
Probable career field: Healthcare
NATIONAL MERIT TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY SCHOLARSHIP
National Merit Scholarships are announced in four rounds. Counting Monday’s final announcement for 2010, a total of 27 HISD students received National Merit Scholarships. The value of all scholarships offered to HISD’s Class of 2010 totals more than $97 million, which is a new record.
This year’s competition for National Merit Scholarships began when more than 1.5 million juniors in over 22,000 high schools took the 2008 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test which served as an initial screen of program entrants.
In September 2009, some 16,000 Semifinalists were named on a state representational basis, in numbers proportional to each state’s percentage of the national total of high school graduating seniors. Semifinalists were the highest-scoring program entrants in each state and represented less than one percent of a state’s seniors.
To become Finalists, Semifinalists had to submit a detailed scholarship application, which included writing an essay and describing contributions and leadership activities in high school and the community, have an outstanding academic record, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, and earn SAT scores that confirm the qualifying test performance.
About 15,000 Semifinalists attained Finalist standing, and more than half of this group was chosen to receive National Merit Scholarships.
