Daniel H. Guo of Katy, who attend Strake Jesuit College Preparatory in Houston, was announced as a winner of a National Merit® $2500 Scholarship in a July 28 press release from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC®) Nearly all National Merit $2500 Scholarship recipients of 2025 were announced publicly by the corporation in May; however, the award this student was chosen to receive became available after that announcement.

Guo’s probable career field is listed as economics.

By the conclusion of the 2025 National Merit® Scholarship Program, about 6,930 Merit Scholarship® awards, worth a total of approximately $26 million, will have been offered to distinguished high school seniors for college undergraduate study. Two thousand five hundred of the awards, such as the one this student has won, are National Merit $2500 Scholarships for which all of the more than 15,000 Finalists were considered.

Winners of these single-payment awards were named in every state, in numbers based on the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating high school seniors. Recipients of National Merit $2500 Scholarships were selected by a committee of college admission officers and high school counselors who appraised a substantial amount of information submitted by Finalists and their schools. Evaluated were each Finalist’s academic record, including difficulty level of subjects studied and grades earned, contributions and leadership in school and community activities, an essay written by the Finalist, and the recommendation written by a high school official.

This year’s competition for National Merit Scholarships began in October 2023 when high school juniors took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. Last fall, the highest-scoring participants in each state, representing less than one percent of the state’s seniors, were named Semifinalists on a state representational basis. More than 16,000 Semifinalists had an opportunity to continue in the competition.

Approximately 95 percent of the Semifinalists met the very high academic standards and other requirements to advance to the Finalist level. By the conclusion of the 2025 competition, about half of the 15,000 Finalists will be Merit Scholarship winners, earning the Merit Scholar® title.

Two other types of National Merit Scholarships were offered in this year’s competition. Approximately 830 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards were provided to Finalists who met their scholarship sponsors’ criteria, and approximately 3,600 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards were offered to Finalists who will attend one of the 146 colleges and universities financing them.

NMSC, a not-for-profit corporation that operates without government assistance, was founded in 1955 specifically to conduct the annual National Merit Scholarship Program. The majority of scholarships offered each year are underwritten by approximately 280 independent corporate and college sponsors

that share NMSC’s goals of honoring scholastically talented youth and providing educational opportunities for them.