Andalusia’s Will Parker is among Alabama’s 69 National Merit Scholarship winners.

The son of Joe and Candy Parker, he graduated from Andalusia High School on Friday.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced Tuesday that approximately 2,500 winners of National Merit Scholarships will be financed by U.S. colleges and universities. Officials of each sponsor college selected their scholarship winners from among the finalists in the 2013 National Merit Scholarship Program who plan to attend their institution.

These awards provide between $500 and $2,000 annually for up to four years of undergraduate study at the institution financing the scholarship. An additional group of Scholars will be announced in July, bringing the total number of college-sponsored Merit Scholarship recipients in the 2013 competition to approximately 4,500.

Parker will attend Auburn University and major in engineering.

He said previously, “Math and science are my best subjects, so that’s why I want to be an engineer. There (are) so many avenues you can take with engineering. You can be a manager or you can be the one to invent things. That intrigues me.”

This announcement is the third National Merit Scholar release this year.