16 Ward Melville Students Named National Merit Semifinalists

Sixteen Ward Melville High School seniors have been named semifinalists in the 60th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation made the announcement on Wednesday.

Ward Melville has the most semifinalists of any Suffolk County high school. 

Congrats to:

• Stephanie G. Chen
• Donald J. Della Pietra
• Gary L. Ge
• Jayne E. Green
• Nicholas Greene
• Kriti Jindal
• Edward Liu
• Sapna P. Nath
• Adina Nawaz
• Rayma Rao
• Nicole Schneider
• Eric E. Wang
• Felix Y. Wang
• John L. Welde III
• Grace E. Whitney
• Yongqi Zhu

About 1.4 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2015 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2013 Preliminary National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of about 16,000 semifinalists represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors and includes the highest scoring entrants in each state.

These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,600 National Merit Scholarships worth about $33 million that will be offered 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 90 percent of the semifinalists are expected to attain finalist standing, and more than half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar title.