Eleven Herricks High School students, six from Wheatley School and one student from Mineola High School have been named National Merit semifinalists in the 64th year of the program.
The semifinalists were among the top scorers in New York on the preliminary SAT test and National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. This, in turn, puts them among just over 1,100 New York students and about 16,000 nationwide in line to compete for scholarships.
“We are very proud of their acknowledgement,” Herricks High School Principal Joan Keegan said. “We will continue to celebrate their distinction and wish them the best in their academic careers.”
The students at Herricks are Hannah Chu, Ankit Jain, Christina Kim, Jonathan Klibansky, Simon Liu, Eish Maheshwari, Mariana Moshen, Cayla Moy, Nicole Park, Uttsav Patel and Sahith Vadada.
Those from the Wheatley School are Anthony Deluxe, Amanda Kim, Vedant Singh, Kenton Wu, Camellia Ye and Brandon Zhu.
The Mineola senior is Neilah Rustemi.
In total 83 students from area public and private schools are National Merit semifinalists.
These semifinalists include five from Chaminade High School, one from Mineola High School, two from New Hyde Park Memorial High School, 11 from Roslyn High School, 9 from Port Washington, 19 from Great Neck South, four from Great Neck North and one from Floral Park Memorial High School.
Taken together, they represent more than half of Nassau County’s 157 National Merit semifinalists.
Of the 16,000 semifinalists, around 15,000 are expected to advance to finalist status. Selection committees then begin choosing National Merit scholarship winners, with the first scholarships to be formally awarded in March.
There are three types of scholarships: corporate-sponsored Merit scholarships, National Merit $2,500 scholarships and college-sponsored Merit scholarships.
