College scholarships are highly sought after and one of the best  and toughest of these scholarships to earn is the National Merit Scholarship.  To earn this a student must take the PSAT  and score in the top 5% of the 1.5 million students that enter. Earning the scholarship is extremely rare and an amazing accomplishment. A student or two receiving this award in a class is outstanding, but this year five seniors from the high school were chosen. Joe Forrer, Sarah Lewellyn, Sashwat Tripothy, Carleigh Klusman, and Tanner Boyzuick all received this distinguished award. It goes without saying that these sudents have words of wisdom for future applicants.

“Students should definitely take the SAT, ACT test prep course provided by the school.” Scholarship winner Tanner Boyzuick, “Study your vocabulary a lot, that’s super important and I guess just work on your overall test taking skills.”

Boyzuick feels greatful to have earned such a prestigious award.

“It’s really a great honor and then the kids who won it with me are really cool, and it was pretty awesome to see that they got the award too.”

Senior scholarship recipient Carleigh Klusman also had some other helpful tips for hopeful students.

“I would tell them to, A. know what the PSAT is looking and asking for. For example the night before the PSAT I read the booklet that they give you for test prep, which I bet not many people did, but I just wanted a little extra review.” Klusman said, “And if I hadn’t read that I would have missed a lot of grammatical questions because I wouldn’t have known what they were looking for. So I would just try to have a clear understanding of what the PSAT wants and B., take you’re time and personally I wouldn’t omit a lot of questions.”

Students who prepare and practice their SAT skills are always going to have an extra advantage on those who don’t study. There are many online SAT prep websites and Argyle offers a semester long SAT/ACT prep class. Dedication to studying for the SAT and taking advice from these award winners will  help juniors who are trying to achieve the National Merit Scholarship next year.