Karthik Ramaswamy named National Merit Semifinalist

MILFORD — Delaware Valley High School senior Karthik Ramaswamy was named a National Merit Scholarship semifinalist. He's in the running with approximately 16,000 seniors nationwide for about $33 million in scholarship dollars.

Students are competing for 7,600 scholarships that will be offered next spring. They were among the 1.5 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools who entered the 2016 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2014 preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants, a press release reads.

The nationwide pool of semifinalists, which represents less than one percent of all U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants from each state. The number of semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state's percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.

To become a finalist, a semifinalist and his or her high school must submit a detailed scholarship application, in which they provide information about the semifinalist's academic record; participation in school and community activities; demonstrated leadership abilities; employment; and honors and awards received. A semifinalist must have established 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 his or her performance on the earlier qualifying test.

Three types of scholarships will be offered in the spring of 2016: $2,500 National Merit Scholarships, of which 2,500 are available; about 1,000 corporate-sponsored scholarships; and about 3,900 college-sponsored scholarships awarded to students planning to attend the sponsor's institution.

For the corporate-sponsored funds, approximately 250 corporations and business organizations will award the money to finalists who meet their specified criteria, such as children of the grantor's employees or residents of communities where sponsor plants or offices are located, the press release reads.

About 15,000 of the 16,000 semifinalists will be notified in February that they will advance to the finalist level, the National Merit Scholarship Organization said.

As in past years, the final winners will be announced in four staged press releases starting in April and ending in July.

For more information, visit nationalmerit.org.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect the correct an error that originally appeared in the headline.