One Fayette County Public School senior is among 1,000 winners of National Merit Scholarships announced this week. Paul Laurence Dunbar High School student John Bridges, who hopes to pursue a career in the field of computer science, has been awarded a Robert Bosch Corporation Scholarship.

 

Awards from colleges and the National Merit Corporation itself will be announced later this spring. Corporate organizations generally provide Merit Scholarship awards for Finalists who are children of their employees, residents of communities the company serves, or have plans to pursue majors or careers the grantor wishes to encourage. 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 award at any regionally accredited U.S. college or university of their choice.

 

This year’s competition for Merit Scholarship awards began in October 2005 when more than 1.4 million juniors in more than 21,000 U.S. high schools took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants.

 

Last fall, some 16,000 Semifinalists were designated on a state representational basis, in numbers proportional to each state’s percentage of the nation’s high school graduating seniors. Semifinalists were the highest scoring program entrants in each state and represented less than one percent of a state’s seniors.