The National Merit Scholarship Corporation selected 28 Palo Alto High School students as National Merit Semifinalists this year based on their high scores on the PSAT, according to Teacher Adviser Coordinator Ann Deggelman.
Last year, Paly showed a dramatic increase with 46 semifinalists. This year, the number more closely follows historical trends; 28 is one more than the number Paly had in 2008.
A small portion of students are selected as semifinalists out of the whole nation.
“The semifinalist status is offered to 16,000 students nationwide and out of those, 8,000 students are offered to become finalists,” Deggelman said.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation will select the finalists based on the student’s PSAT score and their application form.
“The program ranks it off the student’s PSAT score,” Deggelman said. “They have to fill out an application and the school has to fill out a whole profile with their transcript information. The student has to write an essay and their advisor then writes a letter of recommendation. Then from that, they look at the student’s GPA (grade point average).”
Once a student becomes a finalist, he or she may be offered three different kinds of scholarship money.
“There are three type of scholarship money that the student will receive. One of them is directly from the National Merit corporation. Another one is from a corporate sponsor and the other possibility is that individual college campuses will offer scholarship money to the student,” said Deggelman.
Congratulations to the following Paly students who were named semifinalists:
Samuel Bellows, Pierre Bourbonnais, George Brown, Rachel Capelouto, Cristina Carano, Lucas Chan, Chloe Chen, Dennis Chen, Ava Dordi, Gadi Cohen, Margot Gerould, Andrew Hammer, Yun Hong, Kevin Hu, Sarah Jacobs, Stephen Koo, Steven Lai, Albert Lin, Dustin Nizamian, Hannah Ohlson, Nathan Pinsker, Mark Raftrey, Ryan Rasti, Tyralyn Tran, Samara Trilling, Quinn Walker, Michael Yuan and Scott Zhuge.
These semifinalist winners have already filled out their applications and are currently awaiting results, which are usually announced in the spring, according to Deggelman.