Four EP seniors named National Merit Scholars

Four high school seniors who live in Eden Prairie have been recognized as National Merit Scholars in the 2024 National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) competition.

Sasha Allen, Neha Karri, and Pranav Naranayan from Eden Prairie High School (EPHS) and Anna-Sofia Pedersen, who attends Minnetonka High School (MHS), each won a scholarship in one of the three awards categories: corporate-sponsored, NMSC, and college-sponsored scholarships.

Allen, who intends to study history and computer science at Princeton University, received a $2,500 corporate merit scholarship from the National Distillers Distributors Foundation. She was one of approximately 770 high school seniors nationwide to win a corporate-sponsored NMSC award. These awards are given to finalists who either plan to pursue majors or careers the sponsor wishes to encourage, are children of the sponsor’s employees, or are residents of communities the sponsoring entity serves.

Karri, who intends to study biology at the University of Minnesota this fall, was one of 2,500 Merit Scholar designees nationwide to win a $2,500 NMSC merit scholarship. NMSC merit scholarship winners are the finalists in each state judged to have the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills, and potential for success in rigorous college studies. The number of winners named in each state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the nation’s graduating high school seniors.

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Naranayan, who plans to study biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University this fall, was one of 2,900 high school seniors to win a National Merit Scholarship from one of 149 U.S. colleges or universities. Officials of each sponsor college selected their scholarship winners from finalists who plan to attend their institution. These awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship.

Pedersen, who plans to study aerospace engineering and French at the University of Minnesota, was also awarded a college-sponsored merit scholarship.

An additional group of college-sponsored merit scholarships will be announced in July, bringing the total number of college-sponsored scholarship recipients in the 2024 competition to more than 3,600.

About the 2024 National Merit Scholarship competition

High school juniors entered the 2024 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2022 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) as juniors. This exam served as an initial screen of program entrants.

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Last fall, more than 16,000 semifinalists were named on a state-representational basis in numbers proportional to each state’s percentage of the national total of graduating high school seniors. Semifinalists were the highest-scoring program entrants in each state and represented less than one percent of the nation’s seniors.

To compete for Merit Scholarship awards, semifinalists first had to advance to the finalist level of the competition by fulfilling additional requirements. Each semifinalist was asked to submit a detailed scholarship application, which included writing an essay and providing information about extracurricular activities, awards, and leadership positions.

Semifinalists also had to have an outstanding academic record, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirmed the qualifying test performance. From the semifinalist group, over 15,000 met requirements for finalist standing, and about half of the finalists will be Merit Scholarship winners in 2024.

By the conclusion of the 2024 competition, more than 6,870 finalists will have been selected to receive National Merit Scholarships totaling nearly $26 million.