Dawson High School's Rachel Rhodes and Owais Sarwar won National Merit college-sponsored scholarships, and Christopher Bahr a corporate-sponsored scholarship.

In addition, Pearland High School's Catherine Tregre won a scholarship from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.

This year about 8,300 students from a pool of more than 15,000 finalists won National Merit scholarships -- worth more than $35 million.

Winners boast a strong combination of academic skills and achievements, extracurricular accomplishments and potential for success in rigorous college studies.

The selection committee considered finalists' academic records, difficulty of studies, standardized test scores, leadership in school and community, essays and recommendations from high school officials.

This year's competition for National Merit scholarships began in October 2010, when approximately 1.5 million juniors in 22,000 high schools took the Preliminary SAT.