Andrew Albrecht, a senior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, is among Kentucky’s 22 recipients of 2017 corporate-sponsored National Merit Scholarship awards. Andrew, whose probable career field is computer science, will be supported by the Cardinal Health Foundation.
Corporate sponsors provide awards for National Merit competition finalists who are children of their employees, live in communities the company serves, or plan to pursue college majors or careers the sponsor wishes to encourage. Most of these awards are renewable for up to four years of college undergraduate study and provide annual stipends ranging from $500 to $10,000. Some provide a single payment between $2,500 and $5,000.
In the National Merit Scholarship Corp.’s annual program, winners of $2,500 awards will be announced May 10, and recipients of college-sponsored merit scholarships on June 7 and July 17. By the end, some 7,500 seniors will have received scholarships worth $32 million.
About 1.6 million juniors in 22,000 high schools entered the 2017 competition when they took the 2015 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than 1 percent of seniors, included the highest-scoring entrants in each state. Fayette County Public Schools boasted 38 semifinalists, as announced last fall.