The following is from a Sept. 9 press release from the Millburn School district:
Millburn High School Principal Dr. William Miron announced today that twenty-three senior students from Millburn High School have been selected as Semifinalists in the 2016 National Merit Scholarship Competition. They are William Chen, Jake Gerard, Cynthia Goldman, Arjun Gupta, Satyen Gupta, Claire Hu, Wesley Hu, Austin Jia, Allen Lee, Jason Lee, Curtis Li, Alexa Lieberman, Rebecca Lieberman, Alex Maron, Clare Murphy, Shannon Peng, Claire Singer, Thomas Singer, Ryan Sullivan, Michael Tai, Dhruv Varma, Samantha Wacks, Melissa Wang.
These academically talented students represent less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors who comprise the 16,000 Semifinalists in the 61st annual National Merit Scholarship Program,. They will have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,400 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $32 million that will be offered next spring.
About 1.4 million juniors in more than 22,000 U.S. high schools entered the 2016 National Merit Scholarship program by taking the 2015 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). The number of Semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors. To ensure that academically talented young people from all parts of the United States are included in this talent pool, Semifinalists are designated on a state representational basis. They are the highest scoring entrants in each state.
About 90% of the Semifinalists, or 15,000 students, are expected to advance to the Finalist level and more than half of the Finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the title of Merit Scholar. All Semifinalists may now be considered for some 7,400 National Merit Scholarships, which will be announced in the spring of 2016.
To become Finalists, Semifinalists must maintain a record of very high academic performance, be endorsed and recommended by their school principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm their earlier qualifying test performance. They also must submit a detailed scholarship application, which includes the student’s self-descriptive essay and information about the Semifinalist’s participation and leadership in school and community activities.
In late September 70 Millburn seniors will receive National Merit Letters of Commendation in recognition of their outstanding academic promise. They represent 34,000 of the approximately 50,000 high scorers on the PSAT/NMSQT®
Millburn’s Commended students are: Camille Afable, Andrew Ahn, Jean-Baptiste Andre, Rebecca Barber, Scarlett Bergam, Micheel Boldbaatar, Erica Culberson, William Daniel, Emelie Einhorn, Jordan Gaelen, Jacob Gluckman, Elizabeth Gray, Chloe Hall, Maxwell Harrow, Patrick Hong, Jennifer Jacobs, Lily Jacobs, Colin Jiang, Sarah Jordan, Arielle Kasnetz, Anne Kramer, John Lacy, Shantanu Laghate, Avery Lamp, Grace Layer, Bryant Le, Yifei Li, Maxwell Lincer, Ashley Linehan, Aixin Liu, Simran Malhotra, Max Marell, Katherine Mayo, Carly Mazer, Charlotte Meng, William Meyer, Sukhmani Minhas, Vikrant Misra, Olivia Nagpal, Salman Omer, Sarah Park, Devin Patterson, Malcolm Pickering, Alexander Ren, Brandon Rosenberg, William Ryan, Jake Sauberman, Jenna Sherman, Jordan Shifman, Caroline Shim, Lucas Sigaud, Emma Solimine, Steven Song, Elliot Sotnick, Trevor Stack, Trey Steven, Christopher Stone, Brittany Strear, Christing Tang, Darren Ting, Emily Torre, Zachary Vinik, Lauren Waldman, Calvin Wang, Zachary Weinstein, James Whitty, Allan Yang, Simon Yang, Yanjun Yang, Amy Zhuang.
National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC), which conducts the academic competition, is a privately financed, not-for-profit corporation established in 1955. Merit Scholarship awards are underwritten by NMSC’s own funds as well as by approximately 500 business organizations and higher education institutions.
