Contact: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Eight seniors in Fayette County Public Schools are among the 2,500 distinguished students who have won $2,500 awards from the National Merit Scholarship Corp.

These students were chosen from a talent pool of more than 15,000 finalists. The winners, including 33 from Kentucky, were judged to have the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills and potential for success in rigorous college studies.

Congratulations to these FCPS seniors (with their probable field of study noted):

Henry Clay High School - Sarah Atkins (pediatric oncology) and Caroline Smith (writing).

Lafayette High School - Marshall Roorda (archaeology).

Paul Laurence Dunbar High School - Brian Fei (engineering), Atanas Golev (psychology), Rahul Joseph (medicine), Ranajay Sen (engineering) and Darshali Vyas (medicine).

Selected by a committee of college admissions officers and high school counselors, these scholars may use their awards at any regionally accredited U.S. college or university.

On May 26 and July 12, nearly 5,000 college-sponsored merit scholarship winners will be announced.  About 1,000 recipients of corporate-sponsored awards were named in April.

By the end of this year’s competition, about 8,400 academic champions will have won National Merit Scholarships worth more than $36 million. For more information, visit http://www.nationalmerit.org/.