Katy Shead, Fort Scott, has been selected as a finalist in the National Merit Scholarship Program.

Katy homeschooled through Veritas Scholars Academy (VSA), which is an online school based in Lancaster, PA. On May 30th, she graduated as valedictorian in her class of 115 other students from all over the world.

Her most difficult class was chemistry, she said. “But it was also the most interesting.”

Despite it not being easy, she has chosen it as a major.

Katy will major in chemistry at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan (student population 1400-1800 students) beginning this fall. She will minor in Greek and Classical Education, she said.

Her goal with this education plan:

“I want to read the Greek Bible on my own, and I want to teach chemistry, or something, science or math at a classical school, especially online.”

“I want to study the Greeks and Romans and the original texts, not just the stuff that people wrote about them,” she said.

Katy has had a classical education.

Classical education has three different stages of learning, she said.

“First is grammar and lots of memorization, foundational knowledge. Second is logic, around middle school age, which is how you make a coherent argument with clear and logical thinking, recognizing fallacies. To connect ‘Oh, this happened in this year and it did affect this.’ The third stage is taking the connections in the logic stage, and using information you already have, and communicating it.”

Katy used this education, this past year, to come up with her own research statement and defended it in a paper and a presentation.

A person in Scotland with expertise in the field and a PhD read her paper and asked questions. A professor guided the process and graded it.

Her research statement was  Imago Dei Impact on the Church’s Perception of Autism.

“It was about the inherent value that God gave humans when He created them in His image. The paper argues that if the church recognizes autistic people’s intrinsic value, then they’ll be empowered to love them as they should,” she said. “The point of the paper is that sometimes the autistic members are viewed as charity cases.”

Other awards she has received during her high school years: Dean’s List at VSA from 2021 to 2024, a national award at the 2023 Classical Learning Test, Summa Cum Laude on the 2023 National Latin Exam,  inducted into the  202Highest Honors Class at VSA, and Cum Honore Maximo Egregio in 2021, a National Latin Exam she took, earning a perfect score.

During high school, Katy has been a student mentor, an independent tutor of maths and sciences, a literature club co-chair, and a volunteer at K-7 Kanakuk Camp, Missouri. She also worked with special needs people at Heartland Therapeutic Riding, Kansas, and Camp Barnabas, Missouri. She also volunteered at her grandparents’ annual Shead Farm Festival near Garland.

She is the daughter of Haley and Mark Shead.

About National Merit Scholars

16,000 semifinalists competed in the 70th annual National Merit
Scholarship Program, according to an NMS press release. These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 6,870 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $26 million that will be offered next spring. To be considered for a Merit Scholarship® award,
Semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the Finalist level of the competition.

To become a finalist, the semifinalist and a high school official must submit a scholarship application, providing information about the semifinalist’s academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards received, according to the press release. A semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT® or ACT® scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.