National Merit Scholars Include One Sandburg High School Student

ORLAND PARK, IL — The next group of 2021 National Merit Scholarship winners include one high school student from Orland Park.

The National Merit winners from Illinois are among the more than 3,100 announced nationally this year to receive between $500 and $2,000 scholarships from colleges and universities across the country, the National Merit Scholarship Corp. said in a news release Wednesday.

National Merit Scholarship winner from Orland Park in 2021 is Carl Sandburg High School student Brett R. Fassler. The student received the merit from the University of Alabama, where they intend to study Electrical Engineering.

According to the release, the University of Alabama offers over 150 undergraduate and 85 graduate majors through 12 divisions. A resident student body of some 18,000 comes from across the nation and over 60 foreign countries. The university has many innovative learning programs, a Law Center, a School of Mines and Energy Development, a College of Engineering, and a College of Commerce and Business Administration. Student activities center around some 300 organizations, including fraternal groups, student government, and service organizations.

The National Merit winners announced this week will have their scholarships funded by the colleges and universities that they will attend. One hundred and sixty colleges and universities — including 85 private and 75 public schools — took part in the merit scholarship program in 2021.

An additional group of college-sponsored National Merit scholars will be announced in July, the scholarship corporation said. This group is part of the approximately 7,500 National Merit scholarship winners who will be selected by the end of 2021. National Merit scholarships via corporate-sponsored awards and the corporation’s own $2,500 scholarships were announced earlier in the spring.

Related: Sandburg High School Students Among Top Illinois Student Scholars

More than 1.5 million juniors nationally entered the 2021 National Merit scholarship program when they took the 2019 preliminary SAT/National Merit scholarship qualifying test, the corporation said. About 17,000 semifinalists, fewer than 1 percent of the country’s high school seniors, were announced last fall.

Semifinalists had to write an essay and detail their extracurricular activities, awards and leadership positions to become a finalist. About half of the 16,000 finalists will be merit scholars by the end of the year, the corporation said.

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