(Cazenovia, NY – March 2014) Cazenovia High School senior Bob Louis has been named a finalist for a 2014 National Merit Scholarship.
Now Louis and about 15,000 other finalists will compete for 8,000 National Merit Scholarships worth a total of $35 million. Finalists, according to information on the National Merit Scholarship Corporation website, are chosen based on their academic record, test scores, the high school official’s written recommendation, information about the student’s activities and leadership, and essays written by the finalists themselves.
“It’s encouraging to have progressed to the next step,” Louis said. “The scholarship can have a major impact on my ability to afford college. Besides that, there just aren’t many people selected for this, so it’s exciting to be among the few thousand chosen nationwide.
Louis plans to attend college next year and has applied to Middlebury, Yale, Williams, University of Chicago, Colgate, Vassar and St. Lawrence University. Although he’s still mulling over his major, he said he’s particularly interested in foreign language (especially Russian), linguistics and cognitive science.
Busy both on and off campus, Louis belongs to the high school’s Shakespeare Club, serves as president of the Academic Decathlon team, is involved with the National Honor Society as a tutor, and belongs to the Communication Club. He also plays bass for the orchestra and string ensemble.
Beginning in March NMSC will notify winners of the three types of National Merit Scholarships: $2,500 National Merit Scholarships, corporate-sponsored scholarships and college-sponsored scholarships.
Some 1.5 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2014 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took their PSATs in 2012. The pool of finalists represents less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors. The National Merit Scholarship Program is an academic competition for recognition and scholarships that began in 1955.