Chestnut Hill Area Student Wins Corporate Merit Scholarship

CHESTNUT HILL, PHILADELPHIA — A Springside Chestnut Hill Academy student recently was named a winner of a corporate National Merit Scholarship.

Winners in the 64th annual National Merit Scholarship Program were announced Wednesday.

Corporate sponsors provide National Merit Scholarships for Finalists who are children of their employees, who are residents of communities the company serves, or who plan to pursue college majors or careers the sponsor wishes to encourage.

Springside Chestnut Hill Academy student Alexander C. Koscica won the National Merit Abbvie Inc. Scholarship.

Koscica will likely study engineering.

AbbVie proudly funds the prestigious National Merit Scholarship awards in support of children of employees of AbbVie Inc., U.S. divisions. AbbVie is a leading global biopharmaceutical company established in 2013. It uniquely combines the assets and capabilities of an experienced pharmaceutical company with the flexibility and focus of a biotech company to pursue meaningful opportunities for patients. Its Merit Scholarship Awards recognize outstanding students who are the sons and daughters of AbbVie employees.

More than 1,000 distinguished high school seniors have won corporate-sponsored National Merit Scholarship awards financed by about 160 corporations, company foundations, and other business organizations.

Scholars were selected from students who advanced to the Finalist level in the National Merit Scholarship competition and met criteria of their scholarship sponsors.

Most of these awards are renewable for up to four years of college undergraduate study and provide annual stipends that range from $500 to $10,000 per year. Some provide a single payment between $2,500 and $5,000. Recipients can use their awards at any regionally accredited U.S. college or university of their choice.

Funding for these National Merit Scholarships is provided by corporate organizations that represent nearly all sectors of American industry. Sponsors from the business community have underwritten awards offered in all 64 competitions, expending or committing more than $804 million to support the intellectual development of the nation’s scholastically talented youth.

Over 1.6 million juniors in approximately 22,000 high schools entered the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants.

In September 2018, some 16,000 Semifinalists were designated on a state- representational basis 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.

To be considered for a National Merit Scholarship, Semifinalists had to fulfill requirements to advance to Finalist standing. Each Semifinalist was asked to complete a detailed scholarship application, which included writing an essay and providing information about extracurricular activities, awards, and leadership positions. Semifinalists also had to have an outstanding academic record, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, and earn SAT scores that confirmed their qualifying test performance. From the Semifinalist group, some 15,000 met Finalist requirements.

By the conclusion of the 2019 competition, about 7,600 Finalists will have been selected to receive National Merit Scholarships totaling over $31 million. 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.

NMSC, a not-for-profit organization that operates without government assistance, was established in 1955 to conduct the National Merit Scholarship Program. The majority of National Merit Scholarships offered each year are underwritten by some 400 independent corporate and college sponsors that support NMSC’s efforts to honor the nation’s scholastically talented youth and encourage academic excellence at all levels of education.