Two-Thirds of County’s National Merit Scholars Attend AAPS

LAST WEEK THE National Merit Scholar Corporation announced that about 16,000 U.S. high school students had been named semifinalists in the 2015 National Merit Scholarship competition.

In Washtenaw County, 93 students were named semifinalists. That number is down from the 102 National Merit Scholarship competition semifinalists named in 2014.

The nation’s 16,000 semifinalists will go on to compete for  7,600 scholarships worth close to $3 million. The National Merit Scholarship Program awards three types of scholarships:

  • National Merit $2,500 Scholarships, which provide $2,500 towards the student’s freshman year of college.
  • Corporate-Sponsored Merit Scholarships, which provide four-year renewable awards ranging from $500 to $10,000 per year or single-payment awards ranging from $2,500 to $5,000. Winners must be the children of employees of the sponsor corporation, residents of certain regions, or committed to a certain career.
  • College-Sponsored Merit Scholarships, which provide four-year renewable awards ranging from $500 to $2,000 per year. Winners must agree to attend the college sponsoring the award.

Semifinalists are chosen based on their 2013 Preliminary SAT (PSAT) scores. About 1.4 million high school juniors took the PSAT—and less than one percent of high school seniors qualified to be semifinalists.

Winning a National Merit Scholarship depends on a student’s academic record, PSAT and SAT scores, extracurricular and leadership experiences, and an essay. Other factors include recommendations from the students’ school, the school’s curricula and grading system, and the student’s state residency. The college a student selects may also be a factor.

Of the 93 semifinalists for the 2015 round of scholarship awards, 61 are students in the Ann Arbor Public Schools:

Community High School 

Marianne H. Cowherd

Lydia K. Evans

Claire M. Fishman

Marika E. Milkie

Scott E. Morton

Jeffrey W. Ohl

Sarah M. Toner

 

Huron High School 

Yearahm Ahn

Allen Chang

Alexandra B. Forman

Rachel W. Hai

Andrew Z. Hiyama

John M. Hurley

Laura Kanji

Shalini S. Lakshmanan

Mitch Lin

Nuha Mahmood

Sreya Modepalli

Malay Mody

Adrian Reed Twiss

Orion T. Sang

Seth A. Stancroff

Jeffrey T. Zhang

 

Pioneer High School

Anna D. Croley

Peter B. Duckett

Xuerui Fa

Amy X. Han

Betty X. Hu

Amelia R. Huang

Saloni M. Jaikamal

Sanika Kulkarni

Michael Y. Lee

Nicholas Liu

Stone M. Mathers

Emily P. Newman

Paloma M. Paez-Coombe

Paul J. Paternoster

Lisa Qian

Ada F. Seger-Brown

Avital H. Smotrich-Barr

Giacomo E. Squatriti

Brian Xiao

Daphne Yang

Karen Zhang

Qihan Zhu

 

Skyline High School 

Andrew Ames

Morgan Borjigin-Wang

Zachary Burns

Luke P. Cheng

Amelia N. Clark

David G. Cui

Michael J. Halloran

Tali Khain

Nishant Kheterpal

Joshua Krivan

Lia F. Minonne

Avery E. Moje

Matthew J. Orringer

Jonah B. Pollens-Dempsey

Shwetha Rajaram

Kevin W. Zhang

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