Tri-Cities student earns National Merit scholarship from Battelle
A Tri-Cities student has been selected to win a 2025 corporate-sponsored National Merit scholarship.
Hanford High school’s Audrey Xu, who hopes to study engineering in college, was awarded the Battelle Memorial Institute scholarship.
A total award was not listed by National Merit, but most awards are renewable for up to four years of college undergradate study and provide annual stipends, ranging from $1,000 to $10,000. Some provide just a single payment of $2,500 to $5,000.
Xu is a former data scientist intern at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Richland lab run under DOE contract by nonprofit Battelle. She’s also a member of Key Club International and National Honor Society, according to her LinkedIn.
She’s one of just 14 Washington seniors to be awarded a prestigious corporate-sponsored scholarship.
Nationwide, 830 students will take home scholarships financed by nearly 130 corporations, company foundations, endowments and business organizations.
Corporate scholarship recipients are the first round of winners announced this week by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. On May 7, they’ll name the recipients of its $2,500 scholarships, then on June 4 and July 14 name winners of college-sponsored scholarships.
By the end of the summer, more than 6,900 of the nation’s brightest high school graduates will take home more than $26 million in college funding.
Xu and two other Tri-City seniors were named 2025 National Merit semifinalists back in September. They qualified by taking the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, or PSAT, in fall 2023.
They were joined 300 from Washington and 16,000 students nationwide.
These students represent less than 1% of U.S. high school seniors and are among the highest-scoring PSAT test takers in the class of 2025. The number of semifinalists per state is proportional to the state’s percentage of total graduating seniors nationwide.
To become a finalist, students had to submit a detailed application that lists their academic record, participation in scholastic and extracurricular activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, as well as any honors and awards.
Most of the semifinalists will go on to become finalists. But only about half of National Merit finalists will win scholarships and earn the title of Merit Scholars — a designation that has been awarded to only 382,000 students in 70 years.
Corporate sponsors provide National Merit scholarships for finalists who are children of their employees, residents of communities the company serves or who plan to pursue college majors or careers the sponsors wish to encourage.
