Benicia Student Awarded National Merit Scholarship

BENICIA, CA — A Benicia resident has been named a National Merit Scholar and will receive a scholarship for his college undergraduate study.

National Merit Scholar Brandon Black, who attends Benicia High School, was among a group of 3,100 winners announced Wednesday. The scholars will be awarded between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing their scholarship, a press statement said.

Black plans to study electrical engineering at Texas A & M University. Located in College Station, Texas, the university is chartered by Congress as the state's land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant university.

"Extraordinary faculty and academic resources annually place Texas A&M among the top 10 producers of sponsored research, according to the National Science Foundation, in disciplines ranging from the humanities and social sciences to the life sciences and engineering. Outstanding undergraduates from all 50 U.S. states and over 100 nations have access to more than 150 different degree programs," the National Merit Scholarship Corporation said.

The National Merit winners announced this week will have their scholarships funded by the colleges and universities that they will attend. One hundred and sixty colleges and universities — including 85 private and 75 public schools — took part in the merit scholarship program in 2021.

An additional group of college-sponsored National Merit scholars will be announced in July, the scholarship corporation said. This group is part of the approximately 7,500 National Merit scholarship winners who will be selected by the end of 2021. National Merit scholarships via corporate-sponsored awards and the corporation's own $2,500 scholarships were announced earlier in the spring.

More than 1.5 million juniors nationally entered the 2021 National Merit scholarship program when they took the 2019 preliminary SAT/National Merit scholarship qualifying test, the corporation said. About 17,000 semifinalists, fewer than 1 percent of the country's high school seniors, were announced last fall.

Semifinalists had to write an essay and detail their extracurricular activities, awards and leadership positions to become a finalist. About half of the 16,000 finalists will be merit scholars by the end of the year, the corporation said.

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—Patch local editor Gideon Rubin contributed to this report.