Menu
Wilkerson named National Merit Scholarship winner for 2020
Scholarships and awards just keep on coming for recent Greencastle High School graduate Ben Wilkerson.
The 2020 Putnam County Lilly Endowment Scholarship winner, Wilkerson has received the National Merit DePauw University Scholarship, according to a release by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.
Meanwhile, Wilkerson is also in the running for further recognition on the national scene, having been recently named as a semifinalist in the U.S. Presidential Scholars Program for 2020. He is among 621 students to be so recognized in contention for the prestigious honor.
The son of Scott and Beth Wilkerson of Greencastle, Wilkerson was also one of 40 high school seniors to be named a 2020 Indiana Academic All-Star this spring.
More than 3,300 winners of National Merit Scholarships financed by U.S. colleges and universities were announced.
Officials of each sponsor college selected their scholarship winners from among the finalists in the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program who plan to attend their institution. These awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship.
Sponsor colleges and universities include 92 private and 75 public institutions located in 43 states and the District of Columbia.
The college-sponsored Merit Scholarship winners announced are a part of the distinguished group of about 7,600 high school seniors who will receive National Merit Scholarships for college undergraduate study worth more than $30 million.
More than 1.5 million juniors in approximately 21,000 high schools entered the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2018 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants.
Last fall, Wilkerson and approximately 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 compete for Merit Scholarship awards, semifinalists first had to advance to the finalist level of the competition by fulfilling additional requirements. Each semifinalist was asked to submit a detailed scholarship application, which included writing an essay and providing information about extracurricular activities, awards and leadership positions. Semifinalists also had to have an outstanding academic record, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirmed the qualifying test performance.
From the semifinalist group, some 15,000 like Wilkerson met requirements for finalist standing, and about half of the finalists will be Merit Scholarship winners in 2020.