On September 13, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced the names of approximately 16,000 semifinalists in the 63rd annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Among this year’s semifinalists are 21 from Greenwich schools, both public and private.
Those who qualified as semifinalists by scoring in the top one percent on the preliminary SAT, or PSAT, given to juniors last spring.
To become a finalist, students must submit a detailed scholarship application in which she provides information about her academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, and honors or awards received.
Fifteen semifinalists are from Greenwich High School: Aubrey K Dyckman, Gwen D Gilfond, Nicholas X Glass, Erika S Hauschild, Wesley M Heim, Jakob Karetsky, Alexander J Litt, Steven Ma, Cassandra E Marcussen, Amit Ramachandran, Christian D Rogers, Jason Shi, Shobhita S Sundaram, Michelle Woo and Michelle Xiong.
At King School in Stamford, AJ Degrado who lives in Greenwich, was announced as a finalist.
At Brunswick School semifinalists are Wesley L Peisch and Benjamin E Shore.
At Greenwich Academy semifinalists are Jen-Yuan C Kao, Jaclyn Mule and Jane Watson.
Henry Hittle from Stanwich School. Contributed photo
Stanwich School had one semifinalist: Henry Hittle.
Finalists will go on to compete for 7,500 National Merit Scholarships, worth more than $32 million.
To become a finalist, students must submit a detailed scholarship application with information about their academic record, participation in school and community activities, leadership abilities, employment and honors and awards received. They must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed by a high school official, write an essay and earn SAT scores that confirm their strong PSAT performance.
Finalists will be notified in February 2017.