Senior Luke Sparks first found out he was a National Merit Scholar just two weeks ago, in a quiet moment that began with a handshake from Principal Martinson.
“I got called into the office and Martinson gave me a handshake and said I got it. So that was pretty nice,” recalled Sparks, a senior who also plays soccer, runs unified track and field in the spring, and competes in Quiz Bowl.
But to him, it wasn’t a huge surprise.
“It’s kind of a formality,” said Sparks. “I was pretty confident, just looking at the numbers. There’s like 16,000 semifinalists and 15,000 finalists…So it wasn’t a huge moment, but it was cool.”
Almost 95% of all semifinalists are named finalists. A semifinalist has to meet certain criteria, like academic requirements and a certain SAT or ACT score. They also have to fill out an application and write a personal essay.
“After I got selected as a semifinalist, they sent me this thing I had to fill out, just basic information and an essay,” said Sparks.
The essay prompt gave a lot of freedom in how to answer. It asks students to discuss an experience that shaped their perspective on the world. The exact wording varies each year.
“I wrote about the summer camp I work at, and how that’s been an impactful thing for me,” explained Sparks. “ I tried to show how the summer camp had been impactful for me as a child. So then, working at it, I tried to give the kids the same experience that I had.”
His essay was the part of his application that he was the most confident about, according to Sparks.
“The thing I’m not confident about is the scholarships. I think it’s only half the kids get scholarships,” he said. “It’s a couple thousand dollars, so that would definitely go a long way in helping pay for college.”
Out of the 15,000 students named finalists each year, just under 7,000 receive scholarship money. Sparks is attending Dartmouth College, an Ivy League school in New Hampshire.
“Right now my intended major is Quantitative Social Science, which is math but also social sciences like maybe econ or history,” explained Sparks.
When asked to give guidance to younger students wanting to follow in his footsteps, Sparks had some simple advice to give.
“The biggest thing is just practice for the PSAT. You don’t need to spend money on a tutor or anything, if you get one of those study books and spend a lot of time doing practice problems. Reading books, that helps out a lot too,” he said.
National Merit Scholarship winners will be announced this spring. Until then, he’s staying focused on his future and his upcoming adventures at Dartmouth.
