Karns City High School senior

Dale A. Barnhart of Bruin was named a National Merit distinguished high school student.Barnhart, who plans to make a career of foreign service, won a $2,500 scholarship.She was one of 2,500 students named Wednesday. These Merit Scholar designees were chosen from more than 15,000 finalists in the 2010 National Merit Scholarship Program.Scholarship winners are the finalists in each state judged to have the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills and potential for success in college. They were selected by a committee of college admissions officers and high school counselors.This year's competition for National Merit Scholarships began in October 2008 when more than 1.5 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.Last fall, the highest-scoring participants in each state, representing less than 1 percent of the state's seniors, were named semifinalists on a state representational basis.