Chappaqua/Armonk National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists

CHAPPAQUA/MOUNT KISCO, NY — Nine high school students have been named semi-finalists for the 2021 National Merit Scholarship Program.

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.

More than 1.5 million students applied for the highly competitive scholarship and the semi-finalists represent less than 1 percent of all high school seniors in the U.S. For each state, the number of semi-finalists is proportional to that state's percentage of the total graduating seniors in the country.

High school juniors entered the 2022 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the
2020 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

Here are the nine semi-finalists for the scholarship:

BYRAM HILLS H. S.

• Addeo, Olivia N.
• Bernstein, Ryan
• Ndocaj, John
• Zeltner, Jane B.

HORACE GREELEY H. S.

• Feng, Lucy
• Liu, Jack
• Seidman, Andrew B.
• Sun, Linda H.
• Zhang, Jingyan

To become a finalist, the program explains that students and a high school official 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.

Students will find out in February whether they make it to the finalist stage. Every finalist will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit $2,500 scholarships on a state-representational basis. Also, about 1,000 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards will be provided by 220 corporations and business organizations, and about 180 colleges and universities are expected to finance some 4,000 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards

The scholarship winners will be announced beginning in April 2022.