Simi student 1 of only 4 in county to be named National Merit Scholar

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation recently announced the winners of its annual scholarships.

More than 2,200 winners nationwide were announced, with another group of scholars to be released in July to bring the total of scholarship recipients for 2007 up to about 4,600.

Steven Tran of Simi Valley High was a local winner. Tran, who is headed to Texas A&M University to study computer engineering, was one of four students in the county to earn the distinction.

These awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship.

More than 1.4 million juniors in more than 21,000 high schools entered this year's competition when they took the 2005 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants. Last fall, some 16,000 semifinalists were named in numbers proportional to each state's percentage of high school graduating seniors. About 15,000 of these students met requirements for finalist standing.

Other area winners came from Agoura, Camarillo and Thousand Oaks high schools.