Penn boasts 13 National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists

Posted on September 14, 2016

Officials of National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced the names of approximately 16,000 Semifinalists in the 62nd annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

 

Penn High School principal Steve Hope announced that Penn has 13 National Merit Semi-Finalists: Grant Brenner, Muqsit Buchh, Balajimonesh Devireddy, Jonathan Harley, Sanjana Kulkarni, Julia Kwak, Mason Lee, Hannah McGinness, Baker Nasser, Peter Rutkowski, Emma Schultz, Matthew Shan and Michelle Tapp.

 

These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth about $33 million that will be offered next spring.

 

About 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2015 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state. The number of Semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.

 

A Semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.

 

From the approximately 16,000 Semifinalists, about 15,000 are expected to advance to the Finalist level, and in February they will be notified of this designation. All National Merit Scholarship winners will be selected from this group of Finalists. 

Last Modified January 12, 2022