8 from area named recipients of National Merit Scholarships

Eight area students have been named recipients of National Merit $2,500 Scholarships.

The National Merit Scholarship Corp., based in Evanston, Ill., said the winners from northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan were among 2,500 chosen from 15,000 finalists nationwide.

The area students receiving National Merit $2,500 Scholarship recipients are:

•Lyndsay McCray, of Maumee High School;

•Lucy Chen and Yufei Tian of Perrysburg High School;

•Connor McEwen of Sylvania Northview High School;

•Eric Podolsky and Alice Ou of Sylvania Southview High School, and

•James Jordan and Grace Leutheuser of Hillsdale Academy in Hillsdale, Mich.

The scholarship competition began in October, 2008, when more than 1.5 million juniors in 22,000 U.S. high schools took a preliminary qualifying test.

Scholarship winners in each state are judged to have the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills, and potential for success in college studies.

They were selected by a committee of college admissions officers and high school counselors.

The scholarships may be used at any regionally accredited college or university in the United States.

Past recipients of National Merit Scholarships include Bill Gates, former chairman of Microsoft Corp., in 1973; Elvin Bishop, blues musician, in 1960; Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, in 1971, and M. Night Shyamalan, filmmaker, in 1988.

In addition to the National Merit $2,500 Scholarships, the nonprofit National Merit Scholarship Corp. also awards corporate-sponsored National Merit scholarships and college-sponsored National Merit scholarships.

All told, the commission will award $36 million to 8,400 National Merit scholars this year.