If it wasn’t for scholarships, Brown County High School senior Samuel Bowman would not be able to start classes at Indiana University this fall. He would be going to work instead.

Instead, Bowman, who’s ranked first in his class, ended up getting all his tuition expenses covered, and one of those was from the prestigious National Merit Scholarship Corporation.

Bowman was one of 2,500 students in the United States to be selected to receive a $2,500 National Merit Scholarship.

National Merit winners were picked from a pool of 16,000 semifinalists. Semifinalists were determined by scores on the PSAT, a college entrance exam they took when they were juniors.

Scholars were selected by a committee of college admissions officers and high school counselors. The committee looked at academic records, scores from two standardized tests, contributions and leadership in school and community activities, essays written by the finalists and recommendations from high school officials.

Bowman is the first Brown County student to receive a National Merit Scholarship since Ann Mills, valedictorian of the Class of 2012. Before Mills earned one from Vanderbilt University, it had been nine years since a local student had even been a semifinalist, according to newspaper archives.

Bowman was one of 51 students to receive a National Merit Scholarship in Indiana this year. His is sponsored by the National Merit Scholarship organization. There are National Merit Scholarships that are sponsored by corporate groups and colleges, too. College-sponsored scholarships will be announced later this summer. Ultimately, about 7,600 students will receive National Merit Scholarships this year.

Bowman said his family is the “tough, middle-class situation” where his parents make too much money for him to receive need-based assistance, but they also have other loans they are paying off, too.

“Right now I’m to the point where all of my tuition for IU is covered in scholarships and most of books. Now, it’s just like living costs for me, which is a huge deal,” Bowman said.

Without scholarships, Bowman said he would most likely start out in the workforce after high school. He currently works as an intern for Cummins in Columbus in cybersecurity incident response.

At IU, he plans to study computer science with a focus on privacy and security.

“I’ve always known I wanted to work with computers since I was, like, 5 or 6. But really, the realization about security specifically, that’s recent for me,” he said.

He applied for the company’s School-to-Work program his senior year and began interning last September. He will continue to work at Cummins over the summer to save money for college living costs.

When Bowman was not working in cybersecurity, he was working in the high school’s theater department. He is president of the Thespian Honor Society. During productions, he could be found in the lighting booth helping with lights, sounds and projection. He also does photography for the department.

He also worked in the school’s Eagle Manufacturing student-run business until he started working with Cummins. Now, he works with Eagle Manufacturing after school.

He also enjoys playing the trumpet and is thinking about joining the local community band. “I really miss that. That was one of the things scheduling-wise when I came to the high school, it just didn’t work out anymore,” he said.

His hobbies overall are “computer nerd stuff, obviously,” he said with a smile.

After graduating from IU, Bowman would like to work in cybersecurity as a penetration tester, or someone who goes into company systems and tries to break into them to see where security flaws are.

“That’s my dream job, and working through the steps, probably being an analyst. Ultimately, I would like to work in, like, a leadership position, not only doing the work, but teaching and leading others to do that as well,” he said.

Bowman said he’s drawn to working with computers because that’s a field that’s constantly changing. “It’s not going to become stagnant in a couple of years. It’s definitely a growing field because we’re realizing more and more how much we rely upon technology, and that security in a lot of places is a little lackluster,” he said.

“It’s not just the field that’s constantly changing; the day-to-day work is also continually evolving. When you’re looking at an event, it’s not immediately obvious what you have to do. You kind of have to analyze and think about it,” he said.

Bowman said he is thankful to the people who have helped him throughout his educational career in Brown County Schools, including theater director Laurie Godfrey, engineering teacher Chris Townsend and technology department director David Phelps.

“I could go on and on and list a billion different people, but I’m real thankful for them and the opportunities I have because of it (the scholarship). If I didn’t have these scholarships, I would probably be on a completely different path than I am on today.”