STAMFORD, CT — The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) announced Wednesday that more than 2,900 high school seniors have been awarded college-sponsored National Merit Scholarships, and among them are two Stamford residents.
Gabrielle Diaz-Alcantara, who attends Hackley School in Tarrytown, N.Y., won the National Merit Oberlin College Scholarship, and Maxim Ferits, who attends the Bi-Cultural Hebrew Academy of Connecticut, won the National Merit Harvey Mudd College Scholarship, according to an announcement from the NMSC.
Diaz-Alcantara’s probable career field is music performance, and Ferits’ probable career field is mathematics.
These awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship, the NMSC said in an announcement.
Sponsor colleges and universities include 74 private and 72 public institutions across 42 states and the District of Columbia.
Another round of college-sponsored Merit Scholarship winners will be named in July, bringing the total number of recipients for the 2025 competition to more than 3,600.
This is the third group of scholarship recipients announced this year by the NMSC.
Corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship winners were announced April 23, followed by recipients of the $2,500 National Merit Scholarships on May 7.
By the end of this year’s competition, more than 6,930 students will receive National Merit Scholarships worth approximately $26 million.
Students entered the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) as juniors.
Last fall, more than 16,000 semifinalists were named on a state-representational basis in numbers proportional to each state’s percentage of the national total 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.
More than 15,000 advanced to “finalist” status after submitting academic records, essays, and recommendations, and meeting standardized test benchmarks. About half of the finalists will be Merit Scholarship winners in 2025.
Established in 1955, the National Merit Scholarship Program is privately funded and operates without government support. The majority of National Merit Scholarships provided each year are made possible from the support of about 280 independent corporate and college sponsors.
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