The Maureen O’Donnell Scholarship is awarded annually by the National Latin Exam to students who have earned Gold Medals at the most advanced levels of the examination — Advanced Prose, Advanced Poetry, and Advanced Reading Comprehension. These are the levels at which the NLE is no longer a test of formation in progress but of Latin that has arrived: the language read with the precision and fluency that years of serious study produce. To be nominated is to have been identified, by the examiners themselves, as among the strongest Latin students in the country.
Hunjae Lee and Gyuyeon Park were nominated for the 2024 scholarship. Both have competed consistently across multiple international examinations, placing from beginning to advanced levels, and have pursued advanced coursework including IGCSE and AP Latin preparation alongside their competition record. The scholarship requires that applicants be high school seniors intending to continue Latin in college. Hunjae is a freshman. Gyuyeon is a sophomore. Neither is eligible to apply.
The nomination stands regardless. To be found scholarship-worthy by the NLE before one is old enough to receive the scholarship is a distinction the rules cannot diminish. We record it here as what it is: recognition, by the people who set the standard, that the standard has been met — and met early.
Both students appear elsewhere in this year’s record. Hunjae Lee placed first in the CAMWS Latin Translation Contest and was named among the NLVE World Champions. Gyuyeon Park placed first in the CAMWS contest as well — the same competition, the same result, independently earned. The Maureen O’Donnell nomination adds a third entry to a year that has already demonstrated, across very different kinds of Latin knowledge, that the formation is not thin. We congratulate them both, and we look forward to noting, in due course, that they were eligible at last.