7 Beaufort County School District students earned National Merit Scholarship
From staff reports
Beaufort High School graduate Susan Livesay is one of seven Beaufort County School District students offered the prestigious National Merit Scholarship, having been judged to have the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills, and potential for success in rigorous college studies.
“This is a great accomplishment for these exceptional students and our district,” Superintendent Frank Rodriguez said in a release. “It speaks to the academic rigor we offer, and the superb instructional environment provided by our educators and staff in support of student achievement.”
Livesay, along with Lucy Peltz (May River), Benjamin Lewis (Hilton Head Island), Jason Ni (Bluffton) and McKenzie Morgan (Bluffton), are among only 3,800 high school seniors nationwide who were offered a National Merit Scholarship for study at sponsoring colleges or universities. This national recognition came in the third round of announcements by the NMSC.
Officials of each sponsor college selected their scholarship winners from among the Finalists in the 2023 National Merit Scholarship Program who plan to attend their institution.
This year, 153 higher education institutions are underwriting Merit Scholarship awards through the National Merit Scholarship Program. Sponsor colleges and universities include 81 private and 72 public institutions located in 42 states and the District of Columbia.
Livesay, like Lewis, and Ni, will all be attending Clemson University this Fall, studying medicine. Lewis and Ni will study business, and aerospace engineering, respectively.
Peltz will be attending Brigham Young University to study Aerospace Engineering. Although Morgan declined her National Merit Scholarship offer from Florida State, she will attend Duke University to study Engineering.
May River High School students Sarah Nunez and Brooks van Esselstyn are among approximately 840 distinguished high school seniors across the country who won Corporate-Sponsored National Merit Scholarship awards financed by about 107 corporations, company foundations, and other business organizations. This national recognition came in the second round of announcements by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC).
Nunez will attend the University of Alabama this Fall, studying Speech/Language Pathology. Van Esselstyn will attend Florida Tech to study Aerospace Engineering.
The 2023 National Merit Scholarship competition
High school juniors entered the 2023 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2021 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. Semifinalists were the highest-scoring program entrants in each state and represented fewer than one percent of the nation’s seniors.
To compete for Merit Scholarship awards, Semifinalists first had to advance to the Finalist level of the competition by fulfilling additional requirements. Each Semifinalist was asked to submit a detailed scholarship application, which included writing an essay and providing information about extracurricular activities, awards, and leadership positions.
Semifinalists also had to have an outstanding academic record, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirmed the qualifying test performance. Approximately half of the Finalists were chosen to receive National Merit Scholarships.
NMSC, a not-for-profit organization that operates without government assistance, was founded in 1955 to conduct the National Merit Scholarship Program. Over the past 68 years, approximately 375,000 outstanding young individuals have won National Merit Scholarships worth more than $1.3 billion. The majority of awards offered each year are underwritten by approximately 340 independent corporate and college sponsors that support NMSC’s efforts to recognize scholastically talented youth and encourage the pursuit of academic excellence.
