8 Seneca Valley Seniors Vying For National Merit Scholarships

CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, PA — Seneca ValleyHigh School seniors David Choi, Zachary Garcia, Simren Jayaraman, Parker Logue, Ananya Rao, Avani Salunkhe, Anoop Savio and Dora White have been chosen as semifinalists in the 66th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

These eight seniors will have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,600 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $30 million that will be offered next spring. Over 90 percent of the Semifinalists are expected to attain finalist standing, and about half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship.

About 1.5 million juniors in more than 21,000 high schools entered the 2021 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2019 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. The number of Semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.

From the approximately 16,000 semifinalists, about 15,000 are expected to advance to the finalist level, and in February they will be notified of this designation.