Six Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) graduates from the class of 2016 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:

• Emily Cheng of Madison High School (medicine), National Merit Virginia Commonwealth University Scholarship.
• Terri Hahn of Madison High School (dentistry), National Merit Lehigh University Scholarship.
• Aaron Geldert of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) (music), National Merit University of Miami Scholarship.
• Catherine Im of TJHSST (foreign service), National Merit University of Minnesota Scholarship.
• Bijal Rajput of TJHSST (medicine), National Merit Virginia Commonwealth University Scholarship.
• Ravi Shankar of TJHSST (biomedical engineering), National Merit Virginia Commonwealth University 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, approximately 7,300 students have won Merit Scholarship awards in 2016.  This is the final group of scholarship recipients for the class of 2016.

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 2016 are students with the highest scores on the 2014 Preliminary SAT-National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT-NMSQT®), which serves as an initial screen of program entrants.  The program is administered by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.

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Note: For more information, contact the FCPS Office of Communication and Community Relations at 571-423-1200.