A Brighton High School graduate has been announced as one of the 1,900 recent winners of a National Merit Scholarship financed by a college or university. These Merit Scholar designees join more than 2,800 other college-sponsored award recipients announced in late May.  

Mackenzie Woolf, a resident of Sandy whose probable career field is International Relations, is the recipient of a National Merit scholarship from Macalester College, a highly selective liberal arts college in St. Paul, Minn.

Officials of each sponsor college selected their winners from among finalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program who will attend their institution. College-sponsored awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship.

Sponsor colleges, located in 45 states and Washington, D.C.,  include 120 private and 81 public institutions.

This final group of winners brings the number of 2010 National Merit Scholars to about 8,400. These distinguished high school graduates will receive scholarships for undergraduate study worth a total of approximately $36 million. In addition to college-sponsored awards, two other types of National Merit Scholarships were offered – 2,500 National Merit $2,500 Scholarships for which all finalists competed and more than 1,000 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for finalists who met criteria specified by their grantor organizations.

Over the past 55 years, more than 275,000 outstanding young men and women have won National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $970 million.