Herricks, New Hyde Park Students Named National Merit Semifinalists

Nine local high school seniors are among 16,000 students across the country who have been named semifinalists in the 62nd annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

Seven Herricks High School students and two New Hyde Park Memorial High School students received this honor.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation made the announcement on Wednesday.

Congrats to the semifinalists:

Herricks High School

• Alan Chen
• Nora E. Koe
• Jake Lei
• Nihar N. Shah
• Natalie P. Tan
• Nita W. Wong
• Kelly Tu

New Hyde Park Memorial High School

• Rena Fukuda
• Sam M. Kooran

These high school seniors will move on through the competition to possibly earn 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth about $33 million that will be handed out next spring.

To be considered for a Merit Scholarship award, semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the finalist level of the competition.

About 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program and were screened based on their 2015 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test scores.

These semifinalists represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors. About 15,000 semifinalists are expected to advance to the finalist level. Merit Scholars will be announced in February.

File photo