Another Tri-City student earns National Merit honors. This one will take home $2.5k
Lyla Parker, a Kamiakin High School senior, has been named a National Merit Corporation scholarship recipient.
She and 2,500 others were chosen from more than 15,000 finalists in the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program.
That means she’ll take home $2,500 to use for college and university schooling. She plans to study chemical engineering.
These awards are separate from the corporate-sponsored scholarships announced last month.
A trio of Tri-City seniors earned scholarships sponsored by the Battelle Memorial Institute, which manages the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash.
Parker is one of just 51 in the Evergreen State to take home this prestigious scholarship type for this year’s program. The number of winners in a given state is proportional to the nation’s total graduating class of 2025.
“National Merit $2,500 scholarship winners are the finalists in each state judged to have the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills and potential for success in rigorous college studies,” says a statement from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, which finances most of these single-payment scholarships.
A committee of college admissions officers and high school counselors reviewed finalist student applications and selected winners.
Those application packages included student academic records, scores on the preliminary SAT test, contributions and leadership in school and community activities, an essay and a recommendation written by a high school official.
Seniors qualified for the scholarship program in October 2023 during the preliminary SAT, a standardized test that serves as a forerunner to the college readiness SAT exam. The test serves as an initial screener of 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 to the competition,” the nonprofit’s statement read.
More than 6,900 finalists will earn the title of “merit scholar” at the end of the 2025 program, earning more than $26 million in college scholarships.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation plans to announce more awardees this summer.
Students who have earned college-sponsored Merit scholarships will be announced on June 5 and July 15.
