Four students from Spokane and Pullman named National Merit Scholars

Several area high school students recently found out they were among only a few thousand high school seniors across the country selected to receive a prestigious National Merit Scholarship.

Students who score above a certain threshold on their PSAT test in their junior year are invited to apply for a scholarship. This year 15,000 students from across the United States were selected as finalists and only 2,500 were selected to receive the scholarships. The awards are based on grades, the difficulty of subjects studied, community activities and leadership. Each student had to submit an essay and a recommendation from a high school official.

The Eastern Washington recipients for $2,500 scholarships from the National Merit Scholarship Corp. are Christopher Barron from Freeman High School, Marshall Roll of St. George’s School, Melody Gebremedhin of Pullman High School and Helen Gao of Ferris High School.

Each year individual colleges award their own scholarships to finalists in the National Merit Scholarship program. This year 3,300 such scholarships were given in amounts ranging from $500 to $2,000 annually for up to four years. Eastern Washington recipients for those scholarships are Gwyneth Teel of Lewis and Clark High School (Harvey Mudd College) and Bailey VanderWilde of Lewis and Clark High School (St. Olaf College).

Gao said it just made sense to apply for the scholarship after she was notified that she was a semifinalist based on her PSAT score. “Already getting to be a semifinalist was an honor,” she said. “I wanted to see if I could take it to the next level.”

The fact that there was a scholarship to go along with the honor was also important. “College is pretty expensive,” she said. “The more scholarships the better.”

Gao had an extensive resume to bring to the competition. She’s been involved with the Chase Youth Commission since her sophomore year and is the chairwoman this year.

“It’s pretty important to me,” she said.

She’s participated in a lot of clubs in school and this year was the captain of the math team and president of the robotics and French clubs. She received the Presidential Volunteer Service Award and was named a National AP Scholar based on the scores on the tests at the end of each Advanced Placement class she took. The tests are scored from one to five, with five being the best. “Before my senior year I took eight AP tests,” she said. “I got fives on all of them.”

She is the recipient this year of the Spokane Scholars Foundation’s first place award for mathematics.

She plans to attend Princeton University and study computer science. She applied early and was accepted early after she visited the campus two years ago. “That was my first choice,” she said. “I thought it seemed like a good fit for me.”

Barron had much the same reaction as Gao when he discovered that he was a National Merit Scholarship program semifinalist. “I had heard of the National Merit program before,” he said. “I kind of understood that it was an honor to be nominated.”

He’s been involved in his school’s conservation club since his freshman year and this year is the Community Service Officer with his school’s National Honor Society club. He’s done Knowledge Bowl since his sophomore year and did a stint on the football team his freshman year.

“It was a big learning experience,” he said of playing football. “I’d never done a competitive sport before. I was not very athletic back then, so it didn’t go well.”

He’s one of Freeman High School’s five valedictorians this year thanks to his 4.0 grade point average and was his school’s Spokane Scholars nominee in math. He scored a five on two AP tests last year and a four on the other.

Barron said he plans to use his scholarship to attend the Colorado School of Mines. He’s considering a degree in chemical engineering, but he’s still considering his options. In the end he said he wants to be working in a lab doing research and development.

“I really wanted to find a career, something I could be passionate about,” he said.

Though Barron has good grades and a lot of school and community involvement, he said he didn’t really think he would win a National Merit scholarship.

“Honestly, I did not expect I would ever get it,” he said. “There were a lot of talented people. It was a pleasant surprise. It’s a very big honor.”