Five Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) graduates from the class of 2020 have been named winners of college-sponsored scholarships by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC). Recipients of college-sponsored scholarships from the NMSC, with their probable career fields in parentheses, are:

Rithika Balguri of Chantilly High School (biology), National Merit Virginia Commonwealth University Scholarship.

Tanya Kurnootala of TJHSST (medicine), National Merit Virginia Commonwealth University Scholarship.

Rohan Voddhi of TJHSST (computer science), National Merit University of Chicago Scholarship.

Jessica Yoon of TJHSST (oncology), National Merit Emory University Scholarship.

Mikhail Allen of TJHSST (computer engineering), National Merit University of Maryland Scholarship.

College-sponsored Merit Scholarships provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship. Nationwide, more than 7,600 students have won Merit Scholarship awards in 2020. This is the final group of scholarship recipients for the class of 2020.

National Merit Semifinalists are named each September on a state-representational basis in numbers proportional to each state’s percentage of the national total of graduating high school seniors. Semifinalists for 2020 are students with the highest scores on the 2018 Preliminary SAT-National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT-NMSQT®), which serves as an initial screen of program entrants. Winners are chosen by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, which administers the program.