Perham High School Student named Commended Student in the 2023 National Merit Scholarship Program

PHS principal Ehren Zimmerman, right, presents Jackson Brown with his Commended Student honor from the 2023 National Merit Scholarship Program.

PERHAM (KDLM) – Perham High School senior Jackson Brown has received one of the nation’s highest honors as a Commended Student in the 2023 National Merit Scholarship Program.

Brown, the son of Chris and Shari Brown, entered the National Merit Scholarship Program, a nationwide competition for recognition and awards conducted by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, by taking the 2021 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test in October of 2021. About 34,000 Commended Students throughout the nation are being recognized for their exceptional academic promise. Although they will not continue in the 2023 competition for National Merit Scholarship awards, Commended Students placed among the top 50,000 students who entered the 2023 competition by taking the 2021 PSAT/NMSQT.

“I did not know that it was going to happen. When I originally got my PSAT score, I knew it was good, but it was outside of the range that was expected for the National Merit Scholarship. I knew I was not going to get the scholarship itself, but just being recognized and being in the running for it, is cool,” Brown said. “It is crazy. You think that is a lot of people (50,000) but on the scale of how many high school seniors there are that took the PSAT, that is not very many.”

Brown intends on attending a four-year college after high school majoring in Philosophy.