The finalists, all seniors, are: Seth Heidkamp, son of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Heidkamp of Uxbridge, Mass., who comes to the academy from Uxbridge High School; Saravanan Krishnamoorthy, son of Mr. and Mrs. Suban Krishnamoorthy of Shrewsbury, Mass., from Shrewsbury High School; Jason Sardell, son of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Sardell of Berlin, Mass., from Tahanto Regional High School in Boylston, Mass.; and Jeffrey Westall, son of Mr. and Mrs. Roy Westall of Sutton Mass., from St. John's High School in Shrewsbury, Mass.
The students will compete for approximately 6,700 Merit Scholarships, valued at more than $26 million, that will be awarded this spring. More than one million students took the qualifying test. The National Merit Scholarship Corp. (NMSC), a not-for-profit organization that operates without government funding, conducts the Merit Scholarship Program. About 75 percent of these scholarships are supported by about 600 independent organizations and institutions that sponsor from one to more than 100 awards in a given year's competition; the remaining awards are underwritten by the NMSC.