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The Birmingham Times
Originally posted 4/5/2007

Shannon Gray, a senior at Jackson-Olin High School, has won a National Achievement Scholarship.

She is one of 19 Alabama public high school students were named winners of the prestigious scholarships for undergraduate study today.

Alabama’s winners are among the more than 800 African-American high school seniors in the nation who will share more than $2.5 million in scholarships.

Miss Gray will receive one of 700 National Achievement $2,500 Scholarships from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC).

Miss Gray, who attended Ensley High School until it was merged with Jackson-Olin this school year, is the valedictorian of her class. She has a 4.357 grade point average. She plans to major in nursing and is in the process of making her final choice of which college to attend.

“It is great to see that one of our students has made such a wonderful achievement,” said Superintendent Dr. Stan L. Mims. “She certainly is an outstanding student, and we know that she will go far in life with the kind of abilities and motivation that she has.”

The National Achievement Program is a privately financed, academic competition established in 1964 specifically to honor scholastically talented African-American youth. NMSC, a not-for-profit organization that operates without government assistance, conducts the minority scholarship program. Since 1964, almost 28,000 students have earned scholarships worth approximately $88 million.

Alabama’s National Achievement Scholars were chosen from more than 140,000 students who requested consideration when they took the 2005 Preliminary PSAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) as high school juniors. NMSC narrowed the field to approximately 1,600 semifinalists, who had to fulfill requirements for finalist standing to compete for Achievement Scholarships.