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Two NHS students are National Merit semifinalists
Nevada High School seniors Braydee W. Gaines and Virginia J. Haverstic are semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program.
"This is a good school but achieving at this level takes someone special and this year we have two. The last one we had was in 2008," Chrystie Braden NHS counselor said.
Nationwide, there are 16,000 semifinalists, which sounds like a lot, but in terms of next spring's graduates, that is less than 1 percent of high school seniors in the U.S.
And just how did they get to this point?
It began back in 2015, when about 1.6 million juniors in over 22,000 high schools took the preliminary scholastic aptitude test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants.
To become a finalist, Gaines and Haverstic submitted a detailed scholarship application, in which they provided information about their academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership skills, employment, as well as honors and awards received. In addition, each candidate wrote an essay, had an endorsement written by a school official -- which Braden provided -- and take the SAT, in his or her senior year, earning a score, which confirms the student's earlier performance on the qualifying test.
Gaines said she will take the SAT on Nov. 5, while Haverstic took the exam on Oct. 1, and will learn the results on Thursday. On their pre-SAT, each received an identical score, which was well above what they needed in Missouri.
Asked about future plans, Gaines said, "Ever since I won a writing contest in second grade, I've loved creative writing but I'm also interested in science. So I don't know what I'll major in but I plan to attend Purdue University in Indiana."
"I plan to attend Grinnell College in Iowa and go into human rights law," said Haverstic. "For me, the big change came as books changed from being a way for me to escape to a way to relate to people."
The students said they have not told many people about this honor but each said their parents certainly have.
"We know this is an honor but there are a lot of smart people at this school and in our class," said Gaines.
"For example, right now there are five co-valedictorians in our class; all of them have a 4.0 grade point average. And we both know people in our class and here at school who are really smart and who've done a lot more than us and they deserve to be recognized too. But this is nice and we are grateful and we'll wait and see what happens next."
The Merit Scholars program began in 1954 as a way to promote science and education with organizers seeking to balance making the competition truly national and yet state-by-state. The result, like our government, is a hybrid of the two.
Semifinalists, finalists and most scholarship recipients are chosen state-by-state. And yes, this means that in some states, the SAT score needed to qualify varies from state-to-state but students only compete with those in their own state and not all across the country. This ensures there are semifinalists in every state with their number proportional to that state's percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.
Now here are some more encouraging figures for Gaines and Haverstic, 15,000, or 93.7 percent of the semifinalists will become finalists. One-half of the finalists will be awarded a scholarship and the prestigious title, Merit Scholar. Those odds are significantly better than say, winning the lottery.
Just as the selection of semifinalists and finalists are not awarded nationally but state-by-state, based on the proportion pool, that means Gaines and Haverstic are only being judged against other students in Missouri, and to get this far, they've already passed the biggest cuts by far.
Next spring, about 7,500 National Merit scholarships worth $33 million will be available. To be considered for one of the awards, semifinalists must advance to the final level of the competition by submitting a detailed scholarship application, having an outstanding academic record, writing an essay and earning qualifying SAT scores.
Three types of National Merit scholarships will be offered in the spring. Every finalist will compete for one of 2,500 scholarships worth $2,500, which will be awarded on a state-representational basis. There will also be about 1,000 corporate-sponsored scholarships and another 4,000 scholarships sponsored by 190 colleges and universities where the students will attend.
3M is among the corporate sponsors, awarding scholarships to 40 children of employees and a number of colleges and universities in Missouri are participants in the school based scholarships including the University of Missouri, Columbia and Missouri University Science and Technology.
Scholarship winners will be announced in four groups beginning in April and concluding in July.