Five from Huntington Earn National Merit Honors
Five Huntington High School students have earned honors in the 55th annual National Merit Scholarship program. Senior Rebecca Silverman is a semi-finalist in the prestigious competition and seniors Everett Coraor, Kieran McCarthy-Fell, Maya Horton and Ariel Wertheim have garnered “commended” status.
This year’s National Merit competition drew more than 1.5 million teenagers from 22,000 high schools. The students “entered the 2010 National Merit program by taking the 2008 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants,” according to the National Merit website. “The nationwide pool of semi-finalists, which represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state.”
The National Merit Scholarship program, which dates to 1955, provides recognition and scholarships for top students. About 16,000 seniors advance to the semi-final round of the competition and another 34,000 students receive letters of commendation.
Huntington teachers agree that the five honorees are very bright and high achieving, who take their academic studies seriously. The teenagers have taken the most challenging courses offered by the school and have participated in a range of extra-curricular activities on and off campus.
In addition to high scores on the PSAT/NMSQT, competitors must also meet various stringent participation requirements. They are eventually assigned a “selection index” that is based on their critical reading, math and writing skills scores.
About 90 percent of all semi-finalists will be named finalists and 8,200 of them will win a National Merit scholarship. There is $36 million available for this year’s program. Some “commended” students are also later considered for special scholarships sponsored by corporations. The program is supported financially by 500 businesses and colleges.
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