Three AHS Students are National Merit Scholarship Finalists; One Candidate for National Achievement Scholarship

Ankeny Community Schools is proud to announce that three Ankeny High School students have been named National Merit Scholarship Finalists, and one student is a candidate for the National Achievement Scholarship.

Ankeny High School’s 2012 National Merit Scholarship Finalists and National Achievement Scholarship candidates include:

Iris Bennett is the daughter of Michael and Michelle Bennett of Ankeny, and is a National Merit Scholarship Finalist.  She is a member of the National Honor Society and the Circle of Friends.  Iris works in the YMCA’s Before- and After-School childcare program at Terrace and Westwood Elementary schools.  During her free time, Iris loves to read and play piano and has served as a volunteer at Kirkendall Library and Ankeny TAKE clothing exchange. In addition to being a National Merit Finalist, she has also been named a Governor’s Scholar and an AP Scholar with Honor.  She is also a semifinalist for the Presidential Scholar.  Iris plans to attend the University of Iowa, where she will study chemistry.

Alan Zhou is a National Merit Scholarship finalist.  He was born in Beijing, China, to Xiaochun Yang and Xiaohui Zhou in March 1994, and moved to the United States in 1998.  He began private violin lessons at the age of five in Connecticut, before moving to Ankeny in 2002.  At Ankeny High School, Alan is involved in many extracurricular activities, including debate, chess and violin.  For violin, Alan debuted as a soloist with the Oskaloosa Symphony when he was 10 years old. Since then, he has won several competitions, including being a semifinalist in a national solo competition.  He has performed in several concerts, including one in Bemidji, Minnesota.  Alan is also the chess team captain and head of the Lincoln-Douglas debate team.

Andrew O’Hara is the son of Gregory and Lori O’Hara and is a National Merit Scholarship Finalist. Andrew has founded the Ankeny High School Engineering Club and participated in marching band.  Andrew is a member of the National Honor Society and the Ankeny High School Key Club.  He is an AP scholar and has received three school academic awards.  Andrew volunteers at Living History Farms, the American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, and the Animal Rescue League.  He plans to study engineering at the University of Michigan in the fall.

Belinda Mahama is a candidate for the National Achievement Scholarship Program.  Belinda is the daughter of Anthony and Christina Mahama, and has three sisters, Bertha, Emmanuel, and Elizabeth.  She describes herself as an avid music fan, always collecting it, listening to it and supporting local bands at music festivals.  She is well rounded in the arts, having played the violin for eight years and she enjoys being a writer and artist.  Belinda plans to attend Iowa State University this fall where she will major in pre-med in order to pursue a career as a pharmacist.  She was named a 2011 AP Scholar with Distinction, a 2008 First-Year Doodle for Google semifinalist, and she is the recipient of an academic letter and pin from AHS.

High school students enter the National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the Preliminary SAT/PSAT – a test which serves as an initial screen of more than 1.5 million juniors in some 22,000 high schools. Approximately 8,300 finalists in the 2012 National Merit Scholarship Program will be awarded more than $34 million in scholarships while earning the Merit Scholar title.

To become a finalist, a semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by the high school principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test. The semifinalist and a high school official must submit a detailed scholarship application, which includes the student’s essay and information about the semifinalist’s participation and leadership in school and community activities. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, which represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. The number of semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation is a not-for-profit organization established in 1955 specifically to conduct the annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Scholarships are underwritten by NMSC with its own funds and by approximately 440 business organizations and higher education institutions that share NMSC’s goals of honoring the nation’s scholastic champions and encouraging the pursuit of academic excellence.