13 Area Students Named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists

Thirteen seniors from Great Neck High schools were named Wednesday as semifinalists in the 58th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. These students can now compete for 8,300 National Merit Scholarships, worth more than $32 million, offered in the spring of 2013.

Area semifinalists include 8 Great Neck South High School students including: Ryan F. Dong; Marc A. Fishman; Philip Foo, Grace Ha, Kevin Hui, Dominick Kaczor, David Kim, Lauren Shum and Samuel L. Sommer.

From Great Neck North High School, Bu-Guk Pil, Jayant Sani and Julia Zhuang were named.

From North Shore Hebrew Academy, Elliot J. Frumkin made this list.

In total, 16,000 semifinalists were announced by officials of National Merit Scholarship Corporation on Wednesday. Nearly 1.5 million juniors in 22,000 high schools entered the 2013 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2011 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. Nationwide, the semifinalists represent less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors.

To qualify as a finalist, semifinalists must demonstrate an "outstanding academic record throughout high school." They must also be endorsed and recommended by the high school principal, and have superior SAT scores. About 15,000 are expected to advance to the finalist level. 

Finalists will compete for scholarships including 2,500 National Merit $2,500 awards. Approximately 240 corporations will finance nearly 1,000 Merit Scholarship awards.  What's more, about 200 colleges and universities typically provide 4,800 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for finalists who enroll in the sponsor institution. 

National Merit Scholarship winners will be announced between April and July of 2013.