The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NSMC) has announced the first group of scholarship winners of the 56th annual National Merit Scholarship Awards.

Mansfield ISD is proud to announce that Ian B. Cook from Mansfield Legacy High School is among approximately 1,000 distinguished high school seniors who have won corporate-sponsored National Merit Scholarship Awards. Cook's scholarship award is sponsored by Northrop Grumman Corporation and his probable career field is chemistry.

The awards are financed by about 200 corporations, company foundations and other business organizations.

About 1.5 million juniors from some 22,000 high schools entered the 2011 National Merit Scholarship competition when they took the 2009 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). In September 2010, about 16,000 semifinalists were selected, representing less than one percent of seniors in Texas.

Each semifinalist submitted a detailed scholarship application, including an essay and information about extracurricular activities, awards and leadership positions. Semifinalists were also required to have an outstanding academic record, be endorsed and recommended by a school official and earn SAT scores that confirmed their qualifying test performance.

By the conclusion of the 2011 competition, a total of about 7,800 finalists will be selected to receive National Merit Scholarships, totaling nearly $35 million.