By — Taylor Byrne

Every year highschool students around the country take their Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test or PSAT’s during the month of October. What many don’t know is that this test could qualify you for the National Merit Scholarship. After the 2019 PSAT 16,000 students nationwide received the honor of being semi-finalists for this scholarship, 55 of them from Loudoun County. Eric Shrieber being one of these 55, and the only one from Tuscarora. 

While being one of the semi-finalists is an amazing honor on its own, these students have the opportunity to continue with an application process to be one of 7,500 that receive a 2,500 dollar scholarship, or even one of the 1,000 students that win corporate sponsorship. Unfortunately Eric does not qualify for the corporate sponsorship, but he is very much in the competition for the scholarship money. 

According to Eric the application process has been anything but easy, however he assured me that despite complications that arose he will get his application in, he is also fairly confident with his odds of winning a scholarship. Being one of the few candidates from Loudoun County is amazing on its own, but being the only from Tuscarora is extremely impressive. When Eric was asked how he felt about his achievements he humbly stated, “Being the only candidate from Tuscarora feels a bit surreal. I definitely wouldn’t consider myself the smartest person at THS, so I think I must have gotten a good version of the PSAT for me personally. Once you get high enough standardized test scores, it becomes a game of luck in the sense of if you get a test version that you are able to score well on.” Despite his humble attitude Tuscarora is proud of Eric and everything he has accomplished as well as those to come.