4 Holmdel High Seniors Named National Merit Semi-Finalists

HOLMDEL, NJ — Four students at Holmdel High School were named semi-finalists for the extremely competitive 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program. They are: Emily Levonas, Hannah Lin, Daniel Yuan and Claudia Zhang, all seniors at the high school.

Levonas runs track and field for the Holmdel Hornets; Lin plays violin and performs with the Monmouth Symphony; Yuan is a former member of the Cub Scouts of Holmdel Den #5 and is a math standout who helped Holmdel High win first place in a Jersey Shore Math League event earlier this year. Zhang was accepted into the New York Academy of Sciences' Global STEM Alliance last year.

The semi-finalists were announced Wednesday, Sept. 11.

No student from Raritan High School in Hazlet made the list. Surprisingly, no students from Middletown North or South qualified, either. No students from Rumson-Fair Haven Regional or Red Bank Regional qualified. One student from Christian Brothers did, Drew Valsamedis, and nearly two dozen were chosen from the nationally-ranked high school, High Tech in Lincroft.

As the Matawan-Aberdeen Patch reported, one student at Matawan Regional High School qualified, and two students at Old Bridge High School qualified.

How are students chosen as National Merit semi-finalists? All juniors are automatically enrolled when they take the PSATs; a score above 212 earns them National Merit "commended" recognition. That is about 50,000 of the highest-scoring students in the nation.

From there, the semi-finalists are further winnowed down by state, and the number per state is in proportion to a state's population (i.e., New Jersey will have more National Merit semi-finalists than North Dakota).

There are about 16,000 semi-finalists nationwide, representing less than 1 percent of all high-school seniors in the U.S.

Students must then apply to become a finalist. The student and their high school must submit a detailed application. The application must contain information about a student’s academic record, leadership abilities, the honors and awards they’ve received and more.

High Tech is a magnet public high school focusing on math and science; students must apply to go there. The High Tech students are:

Chen, Kevin
Diament, Justin N.
Echezona, Chukwuemekalum K.
Florendo, Katrina C.
Hansen, Gustav
Jain, Aruj
Jain, Sana
Jiang, Emily S.
Kalanther, Addison G.
Kumar, Amiya
Kumar, Aparna
Li, Karen X.
Liu, Katherine G.
Menon, Arjun C.
Raghavan, Ravi
Sarma, Abhijat
Thalasila, Akhil S.
Wang, Lawrence
Yan, Jason H.
Yao, Brianna S.
Yu, Adrienne
Zhang, Sophie S.

One student from the Marine Academy of Science and Technology out on Sandy Hook was chosen: Isabela Fuentes. Marine Academy is another magnet public school that students must apply to attend.

All of those chosen as semi-finalists will go on to compete for the scholarships that will be offered next spring. More than 90 percent of the semi-finalists will be named as finalists for the scholarship. Of those finalists, about half will win a scholarship to attend college. Students will find out in February whether they make it to the finalist stage. The average NMS scholarships are only worth about $2,500, but to even be considered a semi-finalist is prestigious in the academic world.