COUNTYWIDE : 14 Win National Merit Scholarships

Fourteen Orange County residents are among 88 Californians and 1,100 students nationwide who have won corporate-sponsored scholarships, the National Merit Scholarship Corp. (NMSC) has announced.

The students were chosen because they have qualifications of particular interest to the companies awarding the prizes, or because they have a personal connection to the sponsoring group.

The Orange County scholarship winners are: Hsuan L. Hsu and Siddartha Padmanabha, Anaheim residents who attend Troy High in Fullerton; William C. Jones of Brea, a student at Brea-Olinda High; Fullerton residents John D. Hendershot of Brethren Christian Jr.-Sr. High in Cypress, Edward Y. Kim of Sunny Hills High in Fullerton and Oscar C. Yuan of Gretchen Whitney High in Cerritos; Spencer T. Cooley of Garden Grove, who attends Pacifica High in Garden Grove; Irvine residents David S. Choi of Irvine High and Alexander N. Keh and Lee A. Kenyon, both of University High in Irvine; Megan Baldwin, a Laguna Beach resident who attends Anderson High in Cincinnati, Ohio; Laguna Hills resident Genevieve S. Go of Laguna Hills High; Jill M. Van Velzer of Lake Forest, a student at El Toro High, and Roger S. Chang, a Foothill High student who lives in Santa Ana.

About 1.1 million students in more than 19,000 high schools entered the 1994 scholarship competition by taking the Pre-Scholastic Aptitude Tests in 1992. About 14,000 of those students were chosen as finalists based on principal recommendations, academic achievement and extracurricular activities.

In addition to these corporate-sponsored scholarships, the NMSC will announce 2,000 winners of National Merit Scholarships, worth $2,000 each, at the end of the month. In May, NMSC will announce 3,600 winners of college-sponsored scholarships.