4 Oswego East Seniors Advance To National Merit Finalist Round

OSWEGO, IL — Four seniors from Oswego East High School have advanced to the final round of the National Merit Scholarship competition, Oswego Community Unit School District 308 officials said Wednesday.

Jensen Coonradt, Amal Prakash, Samarth Sreenivas and Manya Srivastava are among the 15,000 finalists nationwide.

The four students will compete for 7,140 scholarship awards, worth about $28 million. As semifinalists, the students were part of a pool that comprised less than 1 percent of all United States high school seniors. From here, about half of the finalists will be named National Merit Scholars.

To become a finalist, students had to have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by their school's principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm their academic abilities. Each finalist and a school official must also submit a detailed application that includes a student's self-descriptive essay and information about their participation and leadership in school and community activities.

About 1.3 million high school juniors in about 21,000 high schools nationwide entered this year's National Merit program by taking the 2022 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

Scholarship winners will be announced between April and July, joining almost 375,000 other distinguished students who have earned the title.