Woodbridge Teen Selected As National Merit Semi-Finalist

WOODBRIDGE, NJ — One student from John F. Kennedy Memorial High School in Iselin was named as a semi-finalist for the extremely competitive 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program. That student is Pranati Borkhetaria, a senior at JFK High School.

The semi-finalists were announced Wednesday, Sept. 11. No students from the other Woodbridge Twp. high schools qualified, although several did from the area's vo-tech schools. According to the Edison-Metuchen Patch, 24 students at J.P. Stevens High School in Edison qualified.

All junior high school students in the U.S. automatically enter the National Merit ranking 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. To give you an idea of just how competitive selection is, many New Jersey high schools, both public and private, had no students selected.

So congrats to this local Iselin student!

Magnet vo-tech schools, particularly those that focus on STEM education, had many students that qualified. For example, the Middlesex County Academy for Allied Health and Biomedical Sciences, located in Woodbridge, had three students selected:

• Konduru, Divya
• Panchwagh, Neel M.
• Umamageswaran, Akul

And the Middlesex County Academy for Science, Math and Engineering, located in Edison, had four students:

• Hingorani, Meher P.
• Kumar, Avinash A.
• Li, Jason S.
• Pogaku, Sharanya

Students must now 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.

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.