Merit Scholarship Semifinalists Named

 

Semifinalists in the 1974 National Merit Scholarship program from Putnam City and Putnam City West high schools were announced this week.

 

Principal Gary Webb has announced that five students at Putnam City West have been named semifinalists and principal Jim Hamilton of Putnam City announced eleven winners.

 

Putnam City West students are Caroline Case, Jay Cobb, Russell Crain, Linda Kristof and Roy Nuttall. Putnam City students are John Caskey, Barbara Craig, Daniel Darrach, Anela Jones, Jay Jones, Gwen Ladd, Gary Maclean, Deborah Osburn, Robert Rensch, Hugh Rutledge and Joel Silberman. They will compete for about 3,100 Merit Scholarships to be awarded in the Spring. The NMSC reports that 34,450 students have won scholarships valued at more than $95.5 million to date through their program.

 

According to Edward C. Smith, president of NMSC, "The approximately 15,000 semifinalists are representative of the nation's most academically talented young people, and they bring honor not only to themselves, but also to their families, their teachers and their communities."

 

The semifinalists were the highest scorers in each state on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test administered last October to over one million students in about 17,000 schools nationwide. These students, who constitute about one-half of one per-cent of the graduating secondary school seniors in the United States, will complete high school and enter college in 1974.

 

Semifinalists must be confirmed by NMSC to become finalists. Every finalist will be considered for one of the 1,000 National Merit $1,000 scholarships that are allocated on a state basis, according to each state's percent of the total U.S. high school graduating class.

 

NMSC will release the names of the Merit Scholarship winners through this newspaper in early spring.

 

–Newspaper clipping saved by Verna (Dawson) Karns.