See: Mineola National Merit Scholarship Semi-Finalists

MINEOLA, NY — Three bright Mineola kids have just been named semi-finalists for the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program. The semi-finalists were announced Wednesday and include about 16,000 high-school seniors. The kids will compete for the scholarships, which will be offered in the spring.

More than 90 percent of the semi-finalists will be named as finalists for the scholarship, the National Merit Scholarship Program said in a news release. Of those finalists, about half will win a scholarship.

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 United States. For each state, the number of semi-finalists is proportional to that state's percentage of the total graduating seniors in the country.

In Mineola, Connor J. Brandvold, Luke G. Russo and Peter Townley, all of Chaminade High School, were named semi-finalists for the scholarship.

Here are the other semi-finalists from around the area:

Hicksville (Hicksville High School)

• Sarah Choi
• Viveka Jain

Jericho (Jericho High School)

• Matthew Adarichev
• Logan Chang
• Zihou Chen
• Jason Choi
• Anshul Friedman-Jha
• Emily Gan
• Razeen Hossain
• Rachelle F. Lee
• Jennifer Z. Lin
• Riya H. Patel
• Michael J. Pecorara
• Miranda K. Pietraski
• Alp S. Turgut
• Brian S. Weinberger
• Benjamin L. Yao
• Robert W. Yu
• Nicholas K. Yum

Old Westbury (The Wheatley School)

• Karen H. Li
• Madison A. Ramos
• Trenton J. Wong
• Alia I. Yamin
• Sharon Zhong

Westbury (W. Tresper Clarke High School)

• Emma G. Passariello

East Meadow (East Meadow High School)

• Vaishnavi Adupa
• Alyssa Fong
• Alexa S. Wiencek

Uniondale (Kellenberg Memorial High School)

• Paul Bartolemea

Bethpage (Bethpage High School)

• Elrini Drosos

Plainview (Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School)

• Kristen E. Dong
• Gregory C. Kies
• Ziho Kim
• Elizabeth N. Korn
• Cameron V. Robinson

Syosset (Our Lady of Mercy Academy, Syosset High School)

• Brianna N. Patane
• Jacqueline R. Albert
• Giulia M. Barbella
• Connor J. Chen
• Caleb F. Deitch
• Ronit Dhulia
• Vivian W. Duan
• Sophia S. Jang
• Lance Lampert
• Caroline Lee
• Cindy F. Li
• Nikhil Vohra
• Kevin Xu
• Alex Zhuo

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. The scholarship winners will be announced beginning in April 2020.