The Jag

South senior Olivia Svoboda has been named a finalist in the National Merit Scholarship, which is an academic scholarship competition for recognition and university scholarships. For Svoboda to be recognized, she had to score high enough on the PSAT.

Svoboda is thrilled to be a finalist in this scholarship.

“[It’s] exciting, definitely exciting because it opens up opportunities, monetarily,” says Svoboda.

For Svoboda, PSAT wasn’t any more difficult for her than the ACT.

“I’m just a really good test taker,” says Svoboda, “So, I didn’t study for it, but I thought it was fine. It was kind of just like the ACT, just any of those kinds of tests.”

After being a finalist, many colleges have reached out to her with other scholarships, or something more like Oklahoma University.

“I think it [Oklahoma University] was offering like a full ride, no question asked. But I didn’t want to go,” Svoboda says, “Colleges send out a lot of emails and stuff. But they don’t necessarily offer you a lot all the time. They just like to butter you up.”

She also can get another scholarship from other places, though it doesn’t offer as much money.

“I do have a chance to get a scholarship from the National Merit Scholarship Committee,” says Svoboda. She says that it’s more about the title and less about the monetary value.

Mizzou has offered Svoboda the National Merit University of Missouri-Columbia Scholarship. It’s $750 annually and renewable to up to four years.

Out of all of the colleges that have offered her scholarships, Svoboda has picked Mizzou’s.

“I’m going to go to Mizzou and I’m going to study environmental science in the Honors College,” says Svoboda.

She isn’t entirely sure where she wants to go with environmental science, but she knows that she just wants to help the Earth.

“I want to work in conservation,” Svoboda says, “I don’t really know exactly what yet, like maybe a government position or something. But just like protecting the earth basically.”

Svoboda says that if she could do it all again, she would put more time into studying for the PSAT.

“[I’d] maybe study a little bit more,” Svoboda says, “The score I got, [it was] right on the threshold. I just barely got in to be national. So, it’s definitely important to study for that test, because National Merit opens up a lot of opportunities for people,”