OLD LYME–A Lyme-Old Lyme High School senior is among 2,500 National Merit Scholars honored as the most accomplished in their states.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation in a press release identified Christopher B. Gibbons, of Old Lyme, as one of 30 honorees from Connecticut to receive a $2,500 scholarship from the corporation.
The winners were chosen because they showed the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills, and potential for success out of the 15,000 finalists identified nationwide in this year’s contest, the nonprofit corporation said.
The corporation will continue to announce National Merit Scholars through July.
LOLHS guidance counselor Jo Williams in an email praised Gibbons’ “wonderful, curious mind.”
She described an intense schedule over the past several years that has helped prepare Gibbons to study linguistics at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
High school coursework included seven Advanced Placement and college-level classes, including AP Calculus as a sophomore.
Gibbons speaks Mandarin, Spanish and Polish in addition to English. He attended an ACES International trip to China over the April break that his guidance counselor described as “quite an immersion.”
Gibbons is a member of the National Honor Society, the Environmental and Community Service Club and the Chinese Honor Society. He volunteers at the Old Lyme Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library and was a Boy Scout from 2018 to 2024, achieving the Star Scout rank.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation said the number of winners named in each state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the nation’s graduating high school seniors.
The first group of appproximately 830 Merit Scholars was announced in April, the corporation said. About 360 more students will be announced in June and July.
As part of a years-long process, the corporation said the current swath of National Merit Scholars were first identified beginning in October 2023 as high school juniors taking the PSAT. The highest-scoring participants in each state, representing less than one percent of the nation’s high school seniors, were named semifinalists. More than 16,000 semifinalists had an opportunity to continue in the competition.
Over 15,000 of the semifinalists met the very high academic standards and other requirements to become finalists.
More than 6,930 finalists by the end of the summer will have earned the Merit Scholar title and received a total of nearly $26 million in college scholarships, the corporation said.
Leave a Reply