Four Bethesda Students Win National Merit Scholarships

BETHESDA, MD — Four high school students from Bethesda have been named winners of the 2021 National Merit $2,500 Scholarship.

A total of 26 students from Montgomery County schools were among the 2,500 winners nationwide announced Wednesday, selected from a pool of more than 16,000 finalists.

This is the second group of National Merit Scholarship winners to be announced this year. In April, more than 1,000 recipients of the corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship were named.

Additional winners will be named in June and July. By the end of the year, about 7,500 students will have won merit scholarships totaling more than $30 million. The money can be put toward any regionally accredited college or university in America.

A panel of college admissions officers and high school counselors evaluated students on a number of criteria — including grades, the difficulty of courses, standardized test scores, and contributions both inside and outside the classroom.

Here are the winners who attend schools in Bethesda:

Susan B. Rodgers

• Probable career field: Healthcare

• School: Walt Whitman High School

Rachel E. Scissors

• Probable career field: Biology

• School: Walt Whitman High School

Sofia G. Fontana

• Probable career field: Mathematics

• School: Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School

Joshua J. Balbach

• Probable career field: Chemistry

• School: Georgetown Preparatory School

The merit scholarship program was created in 1955. Students in grades nine through 12 vie for academic recognition and financial support.

This year's program began in October 2019. More than 1.5 million juniors at approximately 21,000 high schools took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants, according to officials. Only 17,000 of the highest scorers had the opportunity to continue in this competition.

The number of winners in each state was proportional to the state's share of the nation's graduating high school seniors, according to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.