21 Shaker Heights Students Get National Merit Scholarship Designations

SHAKER HEIGHTS, OH — Shaker Heights High School announced its National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists and Commended Students on Tuesday. The school boasts 21 students who earned one of the designations from the NMS.

The Semifinalists are: Gautam Apte, Daniel B.Crouse, Sarah Grube, Seamus Scanlon, Gabriel Sekeres, Sophia Solganik, Madeleine Suna, Jocelyn Ting and Anna Walker. The National Merits Scholarship group has already designated 16,000 Semifinalists nationwide. Approximately 1.6 million students entered consideration by taking the PSAT.

To be named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists a student must submit a detailed application including information on their academic record, extracurriculars, employment, leadership abilities and other honors and awards received. The student must also get a recommendation letter from a faculty member, write an essay and earn a qualifying score on the SAT. (To stay up to date on local stories, subscribe to the Patch Shaker Heights newsletter. As news breaks and the story develops, you will be the first to receive updates from Patch.)

The NMS Commended Students at Shaker Heights High are Krysta-Marie Aulak, Garrett Child, Gabriel Dacanay, Isabel Fedewa, Ruby Gibson, Geoffrey Grossman-McKee, Bethany Lowenkamp, Emma Neil, Adnan Reddy, Julia Shin, Sriram Sundararajan and Honor Zetzer.

About 34,000 students in the U.S. received the Commended Student designation. The Commended Student status is awarded based off student performance on both the PSAT and SAT. Commended Students represent the top 5 percent of student performances on those tests.

Semifinalists will have the opportunity to compete for more scholarships than Commended Students. NMS winners for 2018 will be announced in four batches starting March 2018 and finishing in mid-June 2018.

Photo from Shaker Heights Schools