KIDS CORNER
NATIONAL MERIT SCHOLAR:
Sophia Evanisko
By Marianne Weaver
Evanisko was the middle hitter on the Thomas Jefferson High School varsity volleyball team. She was the president of Russian Culture Club, vice president of the Russian Honor Society and a representative in the honor council, where she facilitated meetings between students and teachers after honor code violations. Her favorite subject was computer science.
Sophia Evanisko, a 2021 Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology graduate, was awarded a $2,500 National Merit Scholarship and will attend Texas A&M at College Station, double majoring in computer science and electrical engineering. “After I took my preliminary SAT (PSAT) in 10th grade, I found out that the semifinalists of the National Merit Scholarship are based solely on the scores from the PSAT test administered in 11th grade,” she said. “In 11th grade, after I received my test scores, I had to wait around six months to see if I made the cutoff to become a semifinalist. Each state has a different score required to be a semifinalist and Virginia has one of the highest in the nation. I only barely made the cut.”
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because I was accepted into both their engineering and school-wide honors programs,” she said. “Plus, they are giving me around 36 credits for my AP classes, so I basically have one year of college completed already.”
The award earned her automatic admission to Texas A&M’s honor programs and honor’s dorms. “I am attending Texas A&M because of the scholarships they offered me, their great engineering and computer science departments, their internships, and
BULL RUN MOUNTAIN NEIGHBORS
“Programming is a lot like a puzzle,” she said. “You have to think pretty creatively and tackle problems from a different angle, which always keeps me really engaged.” Before moving to Texas, she plans to hike the Shenandoah with friends, catch up on her science fiction reading list, and spend some quality time with her parents.
