The National Merit Commended Scholarship program awards a select few in the 34,000 students that place among the top scorers in the PSATs. Fifteen Bowie students have been chosen as commended students, and are provided an opportunity to gain a college scholarship.

“For commended students, there aren’t any scholarships directly offered by the National Merit Scholarship Program,” commended senior Connor Hurd said. “[It] makes you more attractive to scholarships offered… usually, you’ll be shown these scholarships when you apply to your college of choice.

Despite the struggle of balancing AP classes and SATs in junior year, Hurd said that studying for the PSATs was made easier by preparing with PSAT practice textbooks and summer camps.

“I had already taken the [Princeton] summer camp so I already had all the general concepts in my head,” Hurd said. “[But,] the textbooks have a lot of information not only about how to solve the problems on the test but also how to answer problems that you don’t know how to solve.”

Hurd believes that all the effort put into PSAT preparations could improve future chances at college acceptance.

“It feels nice to get commended for NHS, I worked very hard to get to a point where something like this would even be plausible,” Hurd said. “I enter[ed to] do the best that I could, and take a little of the financial stress off of applying to colleges.”

All Commended Students:

Hannah Cherukuri

Sarah Darbur

Haley Harris

Sydney Heim

Connor Hurd

Iqra Khurram

Scott Krabbenhoft

Julia Krebs

Alekhya Kuchimanchi

Adelynn Lemoine

Jack O’Brien

Lila Peredo

Xander Redheendran

Arik Suez

Lilian Vo