Casey Crary of GHS earns National Merit finalist status

Casey Crary

Greencastle High School senior Casey Crary, son of Peter and Sharon Crary of Greencastle, has been named a finalist for National Merit Scholarship consideration.

This prestigious honor is a testament to Casey’s academic prowess and zest for learning. Being a finalist for the National Merit Scholarship places him in the highest regard among high school students across the entire United States.

Along with a tremendous academic record, Casey is also involved in numerous extracurricular activities. His yearning for knowledge exceeds far beyond a classroom. He has eagerly taken on the challenge of higher education since his sophomore year and undoubtedly gleaned from those opportunities unparalleled experience.

Crary has also been an integral part of state championship teams in both the math and science bowls, totaling three state championships and a runner-up finish. He’s also an accomplished musician, having earned a gold medal from the Indiana State School Music Association for piano.

Crary is now recognized as a National Merit finalist, a feat matched only by a very small percentage of students across the country.

Logan Kuhne, math teacher at Greencastle High School, said, “Casey’s semester projects for calculus demonstrate a remarkable ability to translate his learning from the classroom into real life. For his spring semester project, Casey and his partners found footage of a nuclear test and measured the rate of expansion of the mushroom cloud. Not only was I impressed by the mathematics, but also with the creativity. The project was completely original, devised from scratch by the students and not repeats of past projects.

“Further, Casey truly enjoys mathematics and research. Yes, he has an otherworldly talent for mathematics, but he enjoys developing his talent. There is an element of play to his research. From his award-winning science fair projects to his research on the relationships between being a minority (racial or social) and performance in school (which he plans to publish in an academic journal), Casey finds joy in using his natural abilities. I judged his science fair project over Twitter usage and election results, and I was impressed how he kept developing the project as he continued on in the competition — because science is never complete.

“Casey is quite possibly the smartest person I have ever had in class, Kuhne added. “Casey is a nerd ... but as Ben Bernanke said, ‘The world needs more nerds.’”

Crary is in an elite group of approximately 15,000 seniors from across the country competing for 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth about $30 million that will be offered next spring.

To be considered for a Merit Scholarship award, semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the finalist level. About 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2021 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2020 Preliminary National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The pool of semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.

To become a finalist, the semifinalist and his high school had to submit a detailed scholarship application, in which they provide information about the semifinalist’s academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment and honors and awards received.

A semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay and earn scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test. All National Merit Scholarship winners will be selected from this group of finalists. Three types of National Merit Scholarships will be offered in the spring of 2022.

Every finalist will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit $2,500 Scholarships that will be awarded on a state-representational basis. About 1,000 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards will be provided by approximately 230 corporations and business organizations for finalists who meet their specified criteria. In addition, about 190 colleges and universities are expected to finance some 4,000 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for finalists who will attend the sponsor institution. National Merit Scholarship winners of 2022 will be announced beginning in April and concluding in July.