Seven Upper Dublin High School students and nine Wissahickon High School students have been designated as National Merit semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program. In addition, 18 Upper Dublin and 16 Wissahickon students have been named Commended Students.
The semifinalists from Upper Dublin High School are Jason Chang, Jesse Chen, Daniel Duan, Alan Hong, Karan Jain, Sophia Jarrar, and Peter Liu. The Commended Students from Upper Dublin High School are Aiden Bailey, Zachary Berman, Liam Cassidy, Ella Clayton, Allison Courtenay, Shayna Feldgus, Andrew Haggerty, Willow Kaplan, Noam Kimbro, Noah Lee, Allison Marin, Luke Price, Zachary Seidner, Erica Stelling, Nicole Wealand, Maisie Weiss, Elizabeth Zheng, and Harley Zheng.
The semifinalists from Wissahickon High School are Ella Chang, Sophia Furman, Adam Grossberg, Alexandria Jiang, Suyong Lee, Katelyn Lu, Christina O’Farrell, Joon (Alex) Shin, and Richard Wang. Commended Students from Wissahickon High School are Reed Bram, Lilith Daly, Emma DeMatteo, Melissa Kim, William Lee, John (Jake) Licata, Jeremy Luu, Ethan Moore, Justin Nguyen, Jessica Penrose, Taylor Piergrossi, Arianna Reiserer, Ella Sanders, Dora Stavenger, Christopher Suh, and Michael Sun.
Students were selected based on their 2020 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) scores. More than one million juniors complete the PSAT/NMSQT each year and are automatically entered in the National Merit Scholarship Program. Approximately 16,000 advance to become Semifinalists and approximately 34,000 are Commended. The Semifinalists represent less than one percent of the nation’s high school seniors while Commended Students represent the top five percent.
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 or ACT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test. The commended students are recognized for their exceptional academic promise.
The semifinalists now can advance to the finalist level and compete for
about 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $30 million. The scholarships will be offered in the spring of 2022.