Seniors named finalists in National Merit Scholarship Program

Ten Fayetteville-Manlius High School students were recently named finalists in the 64th Annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

Seniors Elizabeth Brady, Nolan Chiles, Adora Colicci, Emily Cook, Ethan Ferguson, David Haungs, Rachel Liu, Nathan Montgomery, Robert Stewart and Tina Wang were named National Merit Semifinalists last fall and are each now competing for one of 7,500 National Merit Scholarships totaling about $32 million.

The F-M seniors are among 15,000 students who qualified for the scholarship program by scoring among the highest in their respective states on the Preliminary Standardized Achievement Test (PSAT). A finalist must also have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.

The program’s Merit Scholars will be named in spring 2019.

National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC), a not-for-profit organization that operates without government assistance, was established in 1955 to conduct the annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Scholarships are underwritten by NMSC with its own funds and by approximately 440 business organizations and higher education institutions that share NMSC’s goals of honoring the nation’s scholastic champions, according to NMSC.