2 Wilton High School Students Named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists

By Ryan Bonner & Wendy Mitchell

Two Wilton High School students are among 16,000 semifinalists in the 61st annual National Merit Scholarship Program, officials with the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) announced Wednesday.

Congratulations to Rachel S. Pak and Derek A. Thomas.

They are among those still in contention for about 7,400 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $32 million that will be offered next spring.

About 15,000 students, or 90 percent of the semifinalists, are expected to advance to the finals, with about half the finalists earning a scholarship. The number of semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.

To advance to the finals, students and their high schools must submit a detailed scholarship application, in which they provide information about each student’s academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards received.

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 scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.

Finalists will be announced in February.

The competition began with about 1.5 million juniors in about 22,000 high schools who took the the 2014 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. Those who scored the highest on the test advanced to the semifinals. This comes out to less than 1 percent than those who entered the contest.

For more information about the competition, visit www.nationalmerit.org.