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
