8 West Chester Students Are National Merit Semi-Finalists

WEST CHESTER, PA — Eight students from the West Chester Area School District have been named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists for 2020. In addition, three students from the local Westtown School were named.

The semi-finalists were announced on Wednesday and include approximately 16,000 high-school seniors that will go on to compete for the scholarships that will be offered next spring.

West Chester semifinalists are listed below:

From Henderson:

• Vijay K. Anne
• Vikram Chodapaneedi
• Ethan F. Kilroy
• Aravind Viswanathan

From Bayard Rustin:

• Matthew Ferguson
• Justin Morrison
• Catherine Zhu

From East:

• Josh Lewin

From Westtown School:

• Shaobo Liang
• Emma C. Stavis
• Jeshur P. Thangaraj

How are students chosen as National Merit semi-finalists? Students do not actually apply in this first round. All juniors are automatically enrolled when they take the PSATs; a score above 212 earns them National Merit "commended" recognition. That is about 50,000 of the highest-scoring students in the nation.

From there, the semi-finalists are further winnowed down by state, and the number per state is in proportion to a state's population.

Over 90 percent of the semi-finalists will be named as finalists for the scholarship. Of those finalists, about half will win a scholarship.

Students will find out in February whether they make it to the finalist stage. The scholarship winners will be announced beginning in April 2020.