The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) Monday announced over 1,200 additional winners of National Merit Scholarships financed by colleges and universities. These Merit Scholar recipients were in addition to the 2,600 other college-sponsored award recipients announced in June.

The sponsor colleges selected scholarship winners from the National Merit Scholarship Program finalists who will attend their colleges and universities. The college-sponsored awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study.

According to the NMSC announcement, Lincoln Ogren, a Waunakee High School graduate from DeForest, has received a scholarship from UW-Madison. Ogren plans to study engineering.

According to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, this year, 155 colleges and universities are sponsoring over 3,800 Merit Scholarship awards. Sponsor colleges include 82 private and 73 public institutions located in 42 states and the District of Columbia.

This year’s competition for National Merit Scholarships began when high school juniors took the 2020 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. In September 2021, 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 become a Finalist, each Semifinalist had to complete a detailed scholarship application, which included writing an essay, describing leadership positions and contributions in school and community activities, showing an outstanding academic record, and being endorsed and recommended by a high school official. Semifinalists also had to take the SAT® or ACT® and earn scores that confirmed their performance on the initial qualifying test. From the Semifinalist group, over 15,000 attained Finalist standing, and about half of the Finalists were chosen to receive National Merit Scholarships.