Four Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) graduates from the class of 2019 have been named winners of college-sponsored scholarships by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC).

Recipients of college-sponsored scholarships from the NMSC, with their probable career fields in parentheses, are:

• Christian Aliferis of Madison High School (music), National Merit Vanderbilt University Scholarsip.
• Ellen Chen of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) (computer science), National Merit University of Chicago Scholarship.
• Vikrant Mahajan of TJHSST (neuroscience), National Merit Vanderbilt University Scholarship.
• Sebastian Vander Ploeg Fallon of TJHSST (physics), National Merit Carleton College Scholarship.

College-sponsored Merit Scholarships provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship. Nationwide, more than 7,600 students have won Merit Scholarship awards in 2019.  This is the final group of scholarship recipients for the class of 2019.

National Merit Semifinalists are named each September in a state-representational basis in numbers proportional to each state’s percentage of the national total of graduating high school seniors.  Semifinalists for 2019 are students with the highest scores on the 2017 Preliminary SAT-National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT-NMSQT®), which serves as an initial screen of program entrants.  Winners are chosen by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, which administers the program.

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