Three Minnesota high schools produced a quarter of state's National Merit Scholarship recipients

The National Merit Scholarship Corp. announced its final batch of recipients Monday, 31 of whom attended Minnesota high schools during the 2021-22 academic year.

All told, 158 of this year's honorees attended one of the state's public or private high schools. And more than one-fourth attended one of three metro-area high schools.

Wayzata High School produced the most scholarship recipients at 19. Another 13 attend Minnetonka High School, and 11 more attended Mounds View High School.

The latest list of scholarship recipients represents the second batch of Minnesota students awarded financial assistance by the college or university they'll attend in the fall.

Thirteen of those students will attend the University of Minnesota. Another student is headed to Carleton College in Northfield, and one more is attending Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn.

The rest of July's scholarship recipients will attend school out of state.

Officials from each sponsor college — which include institutions from Texas A&M University to the University of Southern California and Vanderbilt University — selected recipients from the list of finalists for the National Merit Scholarship. Each student will receive between $500 to $2,000 annually throughout up to four years of undergraduate study.

Recipients are chosen by a committee of high school counselors and college admissions officials. That panel rates each entrant's academic record, which includes a survey of their grades and difficulty of their coursework. Finalists are also judged by a personal essay and letter of recommendation from an educator.

The Minnesota public school and charter students who received National Merit Scholarships in July are:

Ethan Best, Forrest Johnson, Elizabeth Morgan, Alexander Soltau, William Walker and Greta Weeks of Minnetonka High.

Siler Doane, Ethan Li, Jackson Maroon and Kevin Yang of Wayzata High.

Dashel Baldwin of Lakeville North High; Lydia Chung of St. Anthony Village High; Leo Curtis of Central High in St. Paul; Benjamin Ellis of Rosemount High; Branden Hopper of Mountain Lake School; Chase Imker of Cambridge-Isanti High; Maximilian Kantor-Gerber of Mayo High in Rochester; Maxwell Leach of Eastview High in Apple Valley; Blake Lee of Mound Westonka High; Shubhangi Mohan and Sriyan Reddy of Eden Prairie High; Andrew Sailstad of Duluth East High; Jacob Welch of Lakeville South High; and Margaret Xiao of Mounds View High.