Congratulations to the DHS National Merit Semifinalists for 2022!

Congratulations to the Dunwoody High School National Merit Semifinalists for 2022!

The 2022 DHS Semifinalists are:

• Piranavaskanthan J. Abeyakaran
• Kate M. Bacon
• Olivia R. Bacon
• Jacob G. Callahan
• Khue U. Do
• Prathmesh P. Joshi
• Siddharth Moran
• Maisie R. Worley

These Eight Dunwoody High School seniors have been named semifinalists in the 2022 National Merit Scholarship Program.

To qualify as a semifinalist, students earned top scores on the 2020 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. Millions of students in tens of thousands of high schools take the exam each year. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.

The semi-finalists were announced on Wednesday and include 16,000+ high-school seniors who will go on to compete for the scholarships that will be offered next spring. According to a press release from the National Merit Scholarship Program, about 95 percent of the semi-finalists will be named as finalists in the 67th year of the academic competition. Of those, about half will win a scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar title.

Typically more than 1.5 million students apply for this highly competitive scholarship and the semi-finalists represent less than 1 percent of all high-school seniors in the U.S.

As one school administrator said, "To be recognized as a National Merit Semifinalist is a huge honor for students because it represents years of hard work and dedication to learning . . . Congratulations to this bright group of students. We are proud of your accomplishment and expect great things from you in the future."