Eleven Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) seniors are among about 800 students nationwide who have won awards in the 2004 National Achievement Scholarship Program for African American students.

The winners were selected from more than 120,000 African American students nationwide who participated in the program, which is privately financed and conducted annually by the nonprofit National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC). The 11 MCPS winners are among 40 students in Maryland who will receive awards.

The scholars included 700 recipients of National Achievement $2,500 scholarships and more than 100 winners of corporate-sponsored awards.

MCPS winners of the $2,500 National Achievement scholarship sponsored by NMSC, and their intended career fields, are:

· Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School: Gregory A. Joice, medicine
· Montgomery Blair High School: Michael C. Campbell, computer engineering; Reyna D. Camps, chemical engineering; Mary A. Daniel, English/economics
· Gaithersburg High School: Mark S. Byrd, physics/philosophy
· Richard Montgomery High School: Kamara A. Boers, biology; Lauren M. Jackson, foreign languages/French; Kamilla R. Hassen, sociology
· Springbrook High School: Allison L. Pitt, engineering

Winners of corporate-sponsored scholarships are:

· Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School: Brittney N. Fraser, Northrop Grumman Achievement Scholarship, engineering
· Quince Orchard High School: Kevin D. Lindsay, National Achievement $2,500 scholarship sponsored by State Farm Companies Foundation, law

The winning students were selected from about 1,300 finalists based on their performance on the PSAT/NMSQT as high school juniors, academic performance, recommendations from high school principals, confirming their qualifying test performance on a second test, and essays.

Since the first Achievement Scholars were named in 1965, more than 25,000 outstanding African American students have received scholarships worth more than $80 million for college undergraduate study.