National Scholarship Competitions

The Princeton Review frequently receives questions about college scholarships and grants. Most students simply want to know, "For which scholarships do I qualify?" The problem is, there is no simple way to answer that question. Countless scholarships and grants are available at both the state and local level. There may be an award for daughters of Polish immigrants who wish to pursue a career in botany, or an award for students from a particular county who do well in math. Unlike these more localized awards, however, there are several nationwide scholarship competitions that are available to a broad cross-section of students.

No matter one's background or future plans, there's a good chance that one can compete for several of these awards. Information on these competitions is therefore important to any student looking for money for college. Be warned, though: this stuff is a little dry. Try to stay awake as we fill you in on four of the most prestigious awards: the National Merit® Scholarship; its sister award, the National Achievement Scholarship; the Siemens Awards for Advanced Placement; and the Siemens Westinghouse Science and Technology Award. Find out how to participate, your chances of winning, and what you can expect to win, below.

National Merit Scholarship
Perhaps the best known of all the national competitions is the National Merit Scholarship. It is undoubtedly the largest, with 1.2 million students entering annually. Students are automatically entered into the competition when they take the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). The PSAT/NMSQT compares the critical reading, math problem solving, and writing skills of high school students across the country. Registration is by high school rather than by individual student. While most high schools arrange to administer this exam to their students, those who are interested in these competitions should see their counselor at the beginning of the school year to make sure that arrangements are made to take the test at the school in October.

Before their scores are considered, all students taking the exam are screened for the following qualifications. They must:

• Be enrolled as a full time high school student, planning to enter college in the fall following graduation.
• Be a U.S. citizen (or a permanent resident in the process of attaining U.S. citizenship).
• Take the PSAT/NMSQT at the proper time, in the student's next-to-last year of high school, and no later than junior year.

The students who meet these qualifications are narrowed to a field of 50,000 award candidates based on their test scores. All 50,000 that are recognized by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) have the opportunity to be referred to two colleges or universities of their choice. This referral often boosts those students' standing in the admissions and financial aid processes with those schools.

About 34,000 of the 50,000 applicants receive a Letter of Commendation. They do not continue in the competition for Merit Scholarships. About 1,700 of these 34,000, however, go on to receive Special Scholarships from corporate sponsors in the National Merit Scholarship Program (NMSP). These students file entry forms directly with corporations (a list of participating organizations is provided by the NMSP) whose specialized scholarship requirements they meet. The NMSC contacts a select group of the applicants for each corporation. The applicants then submit scholarship applications detailing their abilities, skills, and accomplishments. The NMSC chooses the winners of the corporate sponsors' Special Scholarships.

Of the 50,000, 16,000 are designated on a state-representational basis as Semifinalists. The NMSC provides applications and a list of requirements to these candidates to advance to Finalist standing in the competition. All winners of Merit Scholarship awards (Merit ScholarSM designees) are chosen from the Finalist group. Each of the approximately 7,900 Merit Scholarship designees receive one of the following:

• A National Merit $2,500 Scholarship
• A corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship
• A college-sponsored Merit Scholarship

Designees are chosen on the basis of academic and extracurricular accomplishments, talents, and scholastic potential.

National Achievement Scholarship
Established to provide recognition for outstanding Black American students, the Achievement Program is conducted simultaneously with the Merit Program. Black students can participate in and be recognized by both programs, but can only receive one monetary award from the NMSC.

Like the NMSP, the National Achievement Scholarship Program requires students to take the PSAT/NMSQT to participate. Students must possess all of the same qualifications that the Merit Program requires. They must also mark the specific place on the PSAT/NMSQT answer sheet to request entry into the Achievement Program.

Approximately 5,000 of the over 110,000 that participate in the Achievement Program each year are honored for their PSAT/NMSQT performance. 3,500 of which have their outstanding scores brought to the attention of about 1,500 four-year U.S. colleges and universities to increase their admissions and financial aid opportunities.

The remaining 1,500 of the initial 5,000 students honored, the highest scoring students from each region of the country, are designated as Semifinalists. After submitting a detailed application and meeting a list of requirements, over 1,200 will qualify as Finalists.

Seven hundred finalists will be chosen as Achievement ScholarSM Designees and receive one of the following:

• A $2,500 Achievement Scholarship from the NMSC
• A corporate-sponsored Achievement Scholarship
• A college-sponsored Achievement Scholarship

Designees are chosen on the basis of academic and extracurricular accomplishments, talents, and scholastic potential.

Siemens Awards for Advanced Placement
Students performing well on a large number of science and math AP exams have a chance (albeit, a small one) to win the Siemens Award for Advanced Placement. All students enrolled in United States or U.S. territory schools (home-schooled students included) are eligible. Students completing their sophomore year are chosen for this award based on the scores of tests they've taken in the 9th and 10th grade. Students completing their junior year are chosen for this award based on the scores of tests they've taken in the 9th, 10th and 11th grades. Awards are given in the following academic year.

The seven AP exams that factor into this award are all science and math-related, but encompass a variety of fields. The exams are: Biology, Chemistry, Calculus BC, Computer Science AB, Physics C Mechanics, Physics C Electricity and Magnetism, and Environmental Science and Statistics. The winners each year have the highest cumulative raw scores on the greatest number of these exams.

This is a prestigious award but the odds are daunting. Only twenty-four winners are chosen out of the roughly 600,000 students taking AP exams in the U.S. Just one male and one female winner are awarded at the two different levels (as high school juniors and seniors) for 4 total in each of six designated regions of the country. Of course, taking AP courses and exams can only make one a better candidate for college admissions and financial aid. Plus, there is no additional effort required to compete for this award besides taking the exams. If a student gains college credit and saves money through the exams, the awards can only be seen as a bonus. Each of the twenty-four winners receives a $3,000 scholarship. Two national student winners, one male and one female, each receive an additional $5,000.

Siemens Westinghouse Science and Technology Award
The most distinguished of the national scholarship competitions also requires the most initiative. It is also potentially the most lucrative award. Students have the opportunity to achieve national recognition and win over $100,000 in scholarship money. The Siemens Westinghouse Science and Technology Award involves high school students working individually or in teams of two or three on independent science research projects. Scientists, researchers and faculty members selected from U.S. universities and laboratories judge the projects.

Freshmen, sophomores, and juniors are encouraged to begin work on projects that they will submit in their senior year. The team leader of a group project must be a senior, but the other members can be enrolled high school students of any year. All high school students who are legal and permanent residents of the U.S. are eligible to participate. Each project must be sponsored by an accredited high school. The team leader must be enrolled at the endorsing high school. All entrants must be enrolled in:

• a high school in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Guam, Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Wake and Midway Islands or the Marianas.
• A Department of Defense Dependents School.
• An accredited overseas American or International School.
• A foreign school as an exchange student.
• A foreign school because their parents live or work abroad.
• Home-schooled students must be endorsed by the school district official responsible for such programs.

Each project must also have a project advisor or mentor. The project advisor or mentor is similar to a college advisor and provides guidance and direction along the various stages of the project. He or she supervises the entire project and submits comments along with the research report.

Projects that contribute to the betterment of society or contribute to the knowledge base of a particular discipline of science are given the most attention. Project titles of recent finalists have included: "Discovery of a Pulsar Bow-Shock Nebula in a Nearby Supernova Remnant;" "Active Spin Control: The Next Step after Anti-Lock Brakes;" and "Sphingolipids and the PI 3-Kinase Pathway: A Novel and Synergistic Approach to Defeating HER-2/neu Chemoresistance." The abstracts to the 2000 competition's projects are available. Social science projects are not eligible for the Siemens Westinghouse Science and Technology Award. Only projects in mathematics or the biological or physical sciences will be accepted. Biology projects are eligible as long as they do not involve experimentation with vertebrates.

Initially only a research report is submitted, but candidates progressing to successive stages of the competition are judged on references, a poster display, a public oral presentation, and a private question and answer session. All portions of the research project are judged by the following criteria: clarity of expression, comprehensiveness, creativity, the soundness of the experimental work, field knowledge, the possibilities for future work, the accuracy and completeness of data interpretations, the appropriate use of sources, scientific importance, overall validity, and the use of teamwork (in group projects).

All projects are narrowed to a field of 300 award candidates by an initial review panel of research scientists. The panel's decisions are based solely on the research report, which is submitted by mail. Students submitting the highest-rated reports (up to ten from each of six geographic regions) will be selected as Regional Finalists. These students will travel (expenses-paid) to one of six regional competitions to be held in November at the competition's partner universities. There they will make a public presentation of their research project. The winners of these regional competitions will be invited to compete at the National Competition in December in Washington, D.C., where they will once again present their project.

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Paying For College Without Going Broke 2006 by Kalman A. Chany. Publisher: Princeton Review

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