Local Teens Make Finals of IntelScience Talent Search

Two students from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring and a student at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria have made it to the finals of the Intel Science Talent Search for 2007, the technology company announced today.

Brian Lawrence and Richard McCutchen at Montgomery Blair and Sarah Marzen at Thomas Jefferson are among the 40 final candidates who will receive scholarships of at least $5,000.

More than 1,700 students from around the country entered the competition, and 300 were named semifinalists earlier this month.

Thomas Jefferson and Montgomery Blair together produced 26 of 300 semifinalists. The schools, ranked first and second, respectively, for the number of semifinalists from a single campus in the annual contest. Jefferson had 14; Blair had 12. The D.C. region yielded 31 semifinalists in all, 10 percent of the nation's total.

The semifinalists received $1,000 checks; their schools received a matching sum for each honoree. On March 8, the finalists will travel to Washington for a week-long event, culminating with 10 students receiving scholarships totaling $530,000. The top winner will receive a $100,000 scholarship.

The talent search, founded in 1942, is the nation's oldest and most highly regarded pre-collegiate science contest.