Greeley West senior Jackson Starkey  has just done something that has not been at Greeley West in at least a decade. Starkey  made it to the finals for the National Merit Scholarship, one of the hardest scholarships in the United States to qualify for. Only 15,000 students in America qualify to be a finalist for this scholarship. To qualify for the scholarship, you have to score a certain selection index on the PSAT and then make and send an application.

Starkey got a 1490 out of 1520 on the test which gave him an index score of 223, and the index score that was needed in Colorado was a 220. This put him into the top 1 percent in Colorado. Starkey was placed into semis for that top PSAT, then sent in an application which got him into the finals. Depending on the states, the index score is higher or lower. The lower is around a 211 while the higher is a 223. With Starkey getting a score of 223, he would have been a top 1 percent in almost every state in the United States.

The winners of the scholarship come out in the end of March and is a $2,500 scholarship. Depending on the school you want to attend, the school will raise a high scholarship to more money. “I hope to get the scholarship itself. The schools I want to attend don’t sponsor a scholarship through the National Merit Program. I would like to attend Harvard, MIT, UC Berkley, or UCLA. At those schools I want to further study math and see where that can get me,” Starkey said.