Nearly 90 students from Montgomery County Public Schools have been awarded National Merit Scholarships of some kind, after the names of 22 additional students were released this week.

In the class of 2011, 89 graduating students have received the scholarships, which are awarded to students based on their academic records and test scores, as well as their leadership and extracurricular activities and a letter of recommendation from an official at their high school.Every year, students are selected from a pool of 1.5 million based on their PSAT scores, with 16,000 selected as semi-finalists and 15,000 selected as finalists.

Nationwide, a total of 8,400 students receive Merit Scholarships, which are sponsored by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, as well as 450 companies and other organizations. Each finalist receives at least a $2,500 scholarship, and also competes for corporate-sponsored and college-sponsored scholarship awards.

The class of 2010 had 70 National Merit Scholarship winners.

The 22 winners announced most recently are: Rebecca N. Curtis, August P. Holdrich, William H. Holdrich, and Stephanie E. Sansbury of Walt Whitman High School; Jonathan B. Song, Andrew L. Gibiansky, David Z. Liao, Savannah L. Cheo, Shelley Jin, Fang Y. Cao, and Andrew N. Rodgers-Schatz of Montgomery Blair; Clara Wu Huang, Elizabeth H. Hunter, and Benjamin H. Lewis of Thomas S. Wootton; Aaron Z. Chan, Kathryn K. Hirabayashi, and Lenore M. Koenig of Richard Montgomery; Lina M. Valivullah and Naomi A. Lisse of Walter Johnson; Michael J. M. Jest of Bethesda-Chevy Chase; Raja Ratna Murthy Ayyagari of Poolesville; and Garrett M. Bourg of Winston Churchill.

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