VIENNA, VA — A student from the Vienna area is in the first round of winners in the 2025 National Merit Scholarship program.
About 830 high school seniors in the U.S. won the corporate-sponsored scholarships, providing annual awards between $1,000 and $10,0000. Most of the scholarships are renewable for four years of undergraduate study, but some awards are single payments between $2,500 and $5,000.
Winners may use the scholarships at a regionally accredited college and university in the U.S. Students who were National Merit Scholarship Finalists were chosen by corporations because they are children of employees, are residents of communities they serve or plan to pursue college majors or careers the company wants to support.
There were 11 winners from Virginia in the initial round of scholarships.
Aileen Wu, a McLean High School student from the Vienna area, received the National Merit NVIDIA Corporation Scholarship, which is from a Silicon Valley company working in artificial intelligence, self-driving cars and more innovations. The scholarship goes to employees’ children. Wu plans to study finance.
Students were entered into the 2025 National Merit Scholarship competition by taking the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test as juniors. There were more than 16,000 semifinalists chosen from the highest-scoring students, representing less than 1 percent of American high school seniors.
To be considered for finalist status, semifinalists had to complete a scholarship application with an essay and information about extracurricular activities, awards, and leadership positions, have an outstanding academic record, receive recommendation from a school official and earn SAT scores confirming their PSAT performance. About 15,000 semifinalists advanced to finalist status.
About 6,930 finalists will win National Merit Scholarships totaling almost $26 million in 2025. According to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, “Winners are the Finalist candidates judged to have the strongest combination of academic skills and achievements, extracurricular accomplishments, and potential for success in rigorous college studies.”
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation will announce winners of its own National Merit $2,500 Scholarships on May 7, and college-sponsored scholarship winners will be announced on June 4 and July 14.
Patch editor Michael O’Connell contributed to this report.
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