Rye Neck Seniors Named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists

MAMARONECK, NY — Three Rye Neck High School seniors — Risa Liebman, Delaney Park and Elena Tisnovsky — have been named semifinalists in the 2019 National Merit Scholarship program. The students are among 16,000 high school students nationwide who were awarded the distinction by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.

They represent the top 1 percent of students from across the country with the highest scores on the qualifying Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. They took the qualifying test in 2017 along with 1.6 million other juniors from more than 22,000 high schools.

“On behalf of the faculty and administration, I congratulate our students and families on this accomplishment,” Rye Neck High School Principal Tina Wilson said. “We wish them luck as they move forward in the process.”

Rye Neck’s semifinalists are in the running for approximately 7,500 scholarships worth more than $31 million that will be offered next spring. About 90 percent of the semifinalists will advance to the next round and about half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship. To become a finalist, the students must submit a detailed scholarship application, demonstrate an outstanding academic record, write an essay and earn scores that confirm their earlier performance on the qualifying test.

National Merit Scholarship finalists will be announced in February, while scholarship winners will be announced in the spring.

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Photo caption: From left, Rye Neck High School seniors Delaney Park, Risa Liebman and Elena Tisnovsky were named semifinalists in the 2019 National Merit Scholarship program. Photo credit: Rye Neck Union Free School District.