MCPS Class of 2012 Earns 81 National Merit Scholarship Awards

[Howard Hartman]

For Immediate Release	July 10, 2012

MCPS Class of 2012 Earns 81 National Merit Scholarship Awards

Twenty-one Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) students have received National Merit Scholarships in the latest round of awards sponsored by universities and colleges. This represents more than half of the 39 recipients in the state of Maryland.

Each sponsoring college or university selected scholarship winners from among finalists in the 2012 National Merit Scholarship Program. These awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship.

Earlier this year, it was announced that 60 MCPS students had been awarded National Merit Scholarships—20 students were awarded college-sponsored scholarships in May, nine students have been awarded corporate-sponsored scholarships, 13 students have been awarded National Achievement Scholarships for scholastically talented African American students, and 18 students have been awarded National Merit $2,500 scholarships.

This final round of recipients brings the total number of 2012 National Merit Scholarship winners in MCPS to 81. This represents more than one-third of the 209 National Merit Scholarship recipients in the state of Maryland.

The latest winners, their intended career fields and the sponsoring university or college are:

Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School: Catherina L. Leipold, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, journalism

Montgomery Blair High School: Alla Avakova, Northeastern University, neuroscience; Shiv R. Kaul, University of Maryland, electrical engineering; Andrew Weixin Lu, Boston University, engineering; Mengdhi Shi, Rice University, economics

Winston Churchill High School: Joshua D. Preuss, University of Maryland, mechanical engineering

Walter Johnson High School: Omar S. Agha, The University of Chicago, economics

Richard Montgomery High School: Elizabeth C. Axley, University of Maryland, anthropology; Daniel Galitsky, University of Maryland, economics/business; David C. Hamilton, American University, film; Jesse M. Itskowitz, Northwestern University, film; Gabriel J. Lazarus, Vanderbilt University, law; Jiaqi Li, University of Maryland; Lucia Lu, The University of Chicago, publishing; Yumeng Wang, University of Maryland, social science

Paint Branch High School: Benedict J. Wills, University of Maryland, accounting

Poolesville High School: Beidi Luo, University of Maryland, accounting

Walt Whitman High School: Elizabeth N. Bartlett, Vanderbilt University, music

Thomas S. Wootton High School: Alice Jenlin Chang, The University of Chicago, economics; Catherine Ji, University of Southern California, engineering