When Sacred Heart High School senior Donald Hinton III recently learned he had been named a winner of one of the $2,500 scholarships offered by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation each year, his first thought was that it would make it much easier to decide which college to attend after graduation.
On May 10, the corporation announced that Hinton is one of 2,500 Merit Scholar designees from around the country who were chosen from a talent pool of more than 15,000 outstanding finalists in the 2023 National Merit Scholarship Program.
“I’m very happy about it, and it helped make college decisions a lot easier on me,” Hinton said. “It’s something that I worked very hard to achieve, so it felt very nice.”
Each year the National Merit Scholarship Corporation identifies students across the United States who have scored at a very high level on the Preliminary SAT and National Merit Scholarship qualifying test as semifinalists. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than one percent of United States high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state.
Qualifying scores vary from state to state and from year to year, but the scores of all semifinalists are extremely high.
Approximately 2 million high school students across the country apply each year for the National Merit Scholarship Program. In February, approximately 15,000 semifinalists are notified by mail at their home addresses that they have advanced to finalist standing. High school principals are notified and provided with a Certificate of Merit to present to each finalist.
Scholars are selected by a committee of college admissions officers and high school counselors, who appraised a substantial amount of information submitted by both the finalists and their high schools That includes the academic record, including difficulty level of subjects studied and grades earned; scores from the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test; contributions and leadership in school and community activities; an essay written by the finalist; and a recommendation written by a high school official.
“It was fairly straightforward,” Hinton said. “We took the test back at the beginning of 11th grade or sometime around then, and we got the results back a little bit later.
“They announced the semifinalists in early September of our senior year, and then from there, there’s a long process, and the school staff was very helpful in getting that figured out. I had to submit a written essay and some extracurriculars, and then … we got the announcement for finalists.”
Hinton plans to use the scholarship to attend the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where he will pursue a dual major in finance and economics.
“I’m still deciding what career path I want to go down, but I figure those majors will be pretty helpful no matter what I decide to do, so I’m still getting it figured out,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of paths that I’m thinking about – I’ve been shadowing a few different surgeries and medical procedures recently, and thought maybe that might be a path I could go down, and start on a pre-med track.
“I’ve also done high school mock trial my entire life, and I’m very interested in law, and I’ve thought maybe that’s a path I want to go down. So there’s a lot of stuff to consider, so I’m just going to spend the next few months getting that figured out.”
NMSC, a not-for-profit organization that operates without government assistance, was founded in 1955 specifically to conduct the National Merit Scholarship Program. The majority of scholarships offered each year are underwritten by approximately 340 independent corporate and college sponsors that share NMSC’s goals of honoring scholastically talented youth and encouraging academic excellence at all levels of education.
