Roslyn High School senior Ryan Chou was named a National Merit Scholarship winner on Wednesday.
Chou, who is undecided on his career path, was one of five Roslyn seniors to advance to the semifinal round of the competition. Chou will receive money to use towards collegiate studies from the National Merit Automatic Data Processing Inc. Henry Taub Memorial Scholarship. Award money can range from annual stipends of $1,000 to $10,000 or single payments from $2,500 to $5,000, according to the National Merit Scholarship Corp.
Efforts to reach Chou or a representative from the Roslyn school district for comment were unavailing.
This year’s program began in the fall of 2020 when more than 1.5 million high school juniors in 21,000 high schools took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. Of those students, 16,000, or just over 1 percent, moved on to the semifinal round, according to the corporation. From there, roughly 15,000 moved on to the finalist round where 7,500 nationwide are deemed Merit Scholars.
The number of winners in each state is based on the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors. Winners are selected based on academics, the difficulty of their course work, scores from two standardized tests, contributions to school and community activities, written essays and school recommendations.
Having demonstrated exemplary academic performance throughout high school, these students were fully endorsed and recommended by their high school principals. Each student also provided biographical data and a self-description of interests, activities, accomplishments and goals.
