HHS Qualifies 12 for National Merit Program
A dozen Huntington High School juniors have qualified to enter the 2014 National Merit scholarship program. The contingent is among a select group nationwide to qualify for the academic competition, which began in 1955.
Huntington students Molly Brambil, Alexander Castillo, Aron Coraor, Greta Farrell, Marc Feldman, Jesse Feldman-Stein, Nicholas Freiman, Jeremy Gelb, Brian Gilbert, Christian Jamison, Benjamin Nikodem and Donovan Richardson have all qualified for the highly regarded National Merit program.
"These students continue to achieve at the highest of levels both in and beyond the classroom," Huntington Superintendent James W. Polansky said. "To have 12 students from the same class qualify for entry into the scholarship competition is truly outstanding."
Each one of the teenagers met the required "selection index" of at least 203 to place among the top 50,000 out of 1.5 million participants. About 16,000 will later be named National Merit semi-finalists. The remaining 34,000 will be officially commended for their performance on the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.
Huntington Principal Dr. Carmela Leonardi said the students will learn in September if they are semi-finalists in the program. Semi-finalists will then have an opportunity to continue in the competition which will culminate in the naming of about 8,300 National Merit finalists in February 2014.
Finalists in the program will begin being notified next March if they have been selected to receive a financial scholarship award. There are about 22,000 high schools in the United States.
Three Huntington students qualified for the 2013 National Merit program: Daniel B, Gallagher, Ari C. Moskowitz and Alexis M. Weitzner, who was named National Merit Finalist. Ms. Weitzner is headed to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee in the fall.