12 Half Hollow Hills Students Named National Merit Semifinalists

The Half Hollow Hills Central School District of Huntington and Babylon is proud to announce that 11 students from High School East and one student from High School West are Semifinalists in the 64th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. These 12 academically talented students join the approximately 16,000 Semifinalists nationwide who have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $31 million that will be offered next spring.

The students who earned this prestigious honor from Half Hollow Hills are High School West’s Felix Luo, and High School East’s Arooba Ahmed, Jared Bank, Rinni Bhansali, Lauren Cherkin, Kaitlyn Hoxha, Jiachen Lee, Morgan Novikoff, Matthew Park, Kavya Rao, Andre Tan and Jessica Winakor.

“We are very proud of our 12 Semifinalists in the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program,” said Dr. Patrick Harrigan, the Half Hollow Hills Superintendent of Schools. “These honorees are a great representation of the qualities we look to instill in our students, and the culture of excellence and equity that we aim to foster in our district.”

Over 1.6 million juniors in about 22,000 high schools entered the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state.

To be considered for a Merit Scholarship award, Semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the Finalist level of the competition. Over 90 percent of the Semifinalists are expected to attain Finalist standing, and about half of the Finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar title.

National Merit Scholarship winners of 2019 will be announced in four nationwide news releases beginning in April and concluding in July. These scholarship recipients will join some 338,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the Merit Scholar title.

An education-oriented community with high academic expectations, the Half Hollow Hills Central School District is located in a residential area of 50,000 people in the central part of Long Island, approximately 40 miles from New York City. Providing for the education of nearly 8,000 students, the school district has five elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools. Half Hollow Hills High Schools are fully accredited by the New York State Department of Education and the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. The district is committed to providing all students with opportunities to excel in academics, athletics and the arts.