8 From Brentwood Awarded National Merit Scholarships

EVANSTON, IL — The National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced more than 3,200 winners of National Merit Scholarships financed by colleges and universities Wednesday. Eight students who live in Brentwood were among that number.

These awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate

study at the institution financing the scholarship. An additional group of Scholars will be
announced in July, bringing the total number of college-sponsored Merit Scholarship recipients in
the 2017 competition to approximately 4,000. (For more schools stories and free news alerts for your neighborhood, sign up for your local Middle Tennessee Patch morning newsletter.)

More than 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2017 National Merit Scholarship competition when they took the 2015 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

Last fall, approximately 16,000 Semifinalists were named 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 stat, representing less than 1 percent of the nation’s seniors.

To compete for Merit Scholarship awards, Semifinalists first had to advance to the Finalist level of the competition by fulfilling additional requirements. Each Semifinalist was asked to submit 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 the qualifying test performance. From the Semifinalist group, roughly 15,000 met requirements for Finalist standing, and about half of the Finalists will be Merit Scholarship winners this year.

The eight from Brentwood with their high school, intended college and probable career path are:

• Samantha Correa, Father Ryan High School, Emory University, psychology
• Sara D. Hanson, Harpeth Hall School, University of Southern California, computer science
• Adriana Kurowski, Ravenwood High School, Harding University, nursing
• Alexandra Marta Plukis, Ravenwood High School, Arizona State University, chemical engineering
• Aleya L. Prasad, Brentwood High School, Belmont University, medicine
• Sabeen Rehman, Hume-Fogg Academic High School, Vanderbilt Univeristy, dentistry
• Kathryn G. Rigsby, Ravenwood High School, Vanderbilt University, neurology
• Richard Y. Sheng, Brentwood High School, Vanderbilt University, dentistry

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