Irvington Seniors Named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists

IRVINGTON, NY — Three Irvington High School seniors — Ethan Chang, Braden Donoian and Chrysmine Wong — have been named semifinalists in the 2019 National Merit Scholarship program. The students, who have shown outstanding scholastic achievement 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.

“It is a tremendous accomplishment to be selected as a National Merit semifinalist,” Principal David Cohen said. “Congratulations to Ethan, Chrysmine and Braden for all of their hard work and success.”

Irvington’s semifinalists took the qualifying test in 2017 along with 1.6 million other juniors from more than 22,000 high schools. They 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, Irvington High School seniors Ethan Chang, Chrysmine Wong and Braden Donoian have been named semifinalists in the 2019 National Merit Scholarship program. Photo credit: Irvington Union Free School District.