USC senior earns $2,500 National Merit Scholarship
Upper St. Clair High School senior Claire K. Zalla has been named a National Merit $2,500 Scholarship recipient – one of only 2,500 in the country.
Winners are named in every state based on the state’s percentage of the nation’s graduating high school seniors. Students entered the scholarship competition by completing the PSAT, the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, during their junior year.
Claire will be attending Yale University this fall where she plans to study English and global affairs.
From approximately 1.5 million students who entered the 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program, only about 16,000 – the top one percent – were named Semifinalists. In order to advance in the competition and be considered for a Merit Scholarship award, a Semifinalist had to become a Finalist by fulfilling several requirements that included submitting a detailed scholarship application and presenting a record of very high academic performance.
In addition to the 2,500 National Merit $2,500 Scholarship winners, an additional 1,000 corporate-sponsored awards were presented to Finalists who met specific criteria and approximately 4,000 National Merit Scholarships were awarded to Finalists from sponsoring colleges and universities.
