Shorewood Students Named National Merit Finalists

SHOREWOOD, WI —Three Shorewood High School seniors recently were selected as finalists in the 2021 National Merit Scholarship Program. Now, the trio becomes eligible for grants that will be awarded to scholarship winners in the spring and early summer, the district has announced.

SHS seniors Robert Crawford, Sebastian Holifield and Abigail Knox were selected among 15,000 finalists nationwide by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. From the group of finalists, the organization will oversee the awarding of over 7,500 scholarships worth more than $40 million.

Initially, over 1.5 million students from 21,000 high schools were entered into the 2021 scholarship program. This past fall, the three Shorewood students were named among 16,000 semifinalists based on their scores on the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

To go from semifinalist to finalist, each student and their school had to submit a detailed scholarship application with information like: academic record, school and community activities, leadership abilities, employment, honors and awards. A student also had to write an essay, get an endorsement from a high school official and earn an SAT score that confirmed their earlier performance on the qualifying test.

Scholarship winners will receive one of three types of grants. There will be 2,500 recipients of the National Merit $2,500 Scholarship, which is awarded on a state-representational basis. About 1,000 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarships will be handed out by corporations to students of their employees or who live in their local community. Additionally, 180 colleges and universities are expected to finance another 4,100 Merit Scholarships for recipients to attend the sponsor's institution.

All of these grants will be announced during four nationwide news releases between April and July.