Duong Vo - Finalist in the National Merit Scholarship Program

Two Garden Grove Unified School District seniors, Duong Vo of La Quinta High School (Westminster resident), and Priscilla Cheng of Los Amigos High School (Fountain Valley resident), have advanced as finalists in the prestigious National Merit Scholarship program.

Both college bound students are among the elite group representing the top half of one percent of the nation's high school seniors.  They will continue in the competition for some 8,300 Merit Scholarship awards worth nearly $34 million that will be offered beginning this spring.  

Approximately 16,000 students nationwide were named finalists among 1.5 million who took the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, the scholarship program's qualifying examination.

Finalists must have an outstanding academic record, be endorsed and recommended by the school principal, score high on the SAT, and write an essay about scholastic accomplishments, school and community activities, and educational plans and goals.  

Merit Scholarship winners for 2012 will be named in four nationwide announcements beginning in April and concluding in July.