Two La Cañada High School students have been bestowed the coveted 2024 National Merit Scholarship and will be awarded $2,500 each to continue their academic endeavors.
The Merit Scholar winners were selected from a talent pool of more than 15,000 finalists in the 2024 National Merit Scholarship Program, according to a press release from the National Merit Scholarship Corp.
LCHS students Cameron Hong and Neal Frankenberg said they were surprised to see their names listed.
Hong, who is committed to Harvard University in the fall, is planning to study government and economics and would eventually like to apply to law school. She said that this scholarship “will help lighten the load” while she’s at school.
Frankenberg, meanwhile, admitted that he had forgotten that the scholarship results would come to light, and “when I found out that I won the scholarship, I was both surprised and delighted.”
Frankenberg will be attending Brown University this fall and will likely major in applied mathematics or mathematical physics.
The scholarship will “allow me to pursue my educational journey while also relieving some of the financial burden on my parents,” he said.
Frankenberg is a member of the math club, academic decathlon, president of the LCHS GeoGuessr club and worked as an intern for L.A. Metro in a summer program.
Meanwhile, Hong has also won a scholarship from the La Cañada Thursday Club and was named a 2024 Coca Cola Scholar. She said as she’s soaking in her remaining time at LCHS, she might leave some advice for other students.
“While national scholarships are very appealing opportunities, I would advise underclassmen to pay better attention to local scholarships,” she said. “I would also advise underclassmen to make the most of the guidance they receive from upperclassmen. I’m so grateful for my older friends who gave me lots of advice as they had already experienced scholarship/college applications.”
This year’s National Merit Scholarship Program began in October 2022 when high school juniors took the PSAT/NMSQT, which served as an initial screening process for program entrants. Last fall, the highest-scoring participants in each state, representing less than 1% of the nation’s high school seniors, were named semifinalists on a state-representational basis. More than 16,000 semifinalists had an opportunity to continue in the competition.
From the semifinalist group, more than 15,000 students met high academic standards and other requirements to advance to the finalist level of the competition. By the conclusion of the 2024 program, more than 6,870 finalists will have earned the “Merit Scholar” title and received a total of nearly $26 million in college scholarships.
NMSC, a not-for-profit organization that operates without government assistance, was founded in 1955 specifically to conduct the National Merit Scholarship Program. Most of the scholarships offered are underwritten by about 320 independent corporate and college sponsors that share NMSC’s goals of honoring scholastically talented youth and encouraging academic excellence at all levels of education.
First published in the May 23 print issue of the Outlook Valley Sun.
