Ten Marlboro, Manalapan Students Earn National Merit Scholarships

MARLBORO, NJ – Several students from Monmouth County have earned National Merit Scholarships, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced. Ten Marlboro and Manalapan residents, representing five high schools, were awarded the prestigious honors.

Winners hail from Colts Neck High School, High Technology High School in Lincroft, Freehold High School, Biotechnology High School in Freehold and Manalapan High School.

Of Morganville, Sophia Y. Hsueh, Sana Jain, Nikhil Kalyanraman, Jiebin C. Laing, Reina M. Samuel and Laura Sun were named winners of the National Merit College-Sponsored Scholarships earlier this year.

Justin N. Diament of Manalapan was also awarded with the National Merit Northeastern University Scholarship.

Katherine G. Liu of Manalapan and Ty Shih Blitstein of Marlboro were both awarded with National Merit $2500 Scholarships, which are supported by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation’s own funds.

Oliver S. Gu of Marlboro was granted a corporate-sponsored award, the National Merit Commvault Scholarship.

Funding for the single-payment National Merit $2500 Scholarships comes mostly from NMSC finances, as well as corporations and company foundations that sponsor awards. Scholars may use their awards at any regionally accredited U.S. college or university.

Over 1.5 million high school juniors from nearly 21,000 high schools entered the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2018 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

Last fall, approximately 16,000 Semifinalists were named in numbers proportional to each state's percentage of the national total of graduating high school seniors. Semifinalists were the highest-scoring program entrants in each state and represented less than one percent of the nation's seniors.

Of the Semifinalist group, approximately 15,000 met requirements for the Finalist title, and about half of the Finalists were named Merit Scholarship winners in 2020. In total, 7,500 winners received over $30 million in college scholarships.

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