Yorktown Senior Wins College-Sponsored National Merit Scholarship

This week, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) announced that Yorktown High School senior Catherine Perez earned a National Merit Scholarship financed by colleges or universities. Perez will attend Brigham Young University.

Officials of each sponsor college selected their scholarship winners from among the Finalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program who will attend their institution. College-sponsored awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship. More than 3,600 students from around the country were named winners of the scholarship.

High school juniors entered the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program when they took the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. Last fall, the highest-scoring participants in each state were named semifinalists.

To compete for Merit Scholarship awards, Semifinalists 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® scores that confirmed the qualifying test performance.