National Merit Awards - Nogales and Rowland High School Students Recognized

The commended students from Nogales High School are Grecia Gonzalez and Khoi Le.

The semifinalists from Walnut High School for the 2008 Merit Scholarship Competition are Steven Baik, Zeng Chen, Jessica Chou, Levey Hao, Linnsie Ho, Kevin Huang, Jonah Kim, Elias Kwon, Benjamin Liu, Robert Ong, Erica Shen, Stephanie Ting, Cindy Wen, Angela Wu, Kai Xiong and Casey Yin.

The semifinalists from Rowland High School are Steve Chang, Frank Teng and Winnie Wong.

Rowland High School also had seven national merit commended students. They are: Lillian Choi, Cindy Jue, Jonathan Wu, Aileen Xu, Sean Yen, Liren Ying and Daniel Young.

The National Merit Scholarship Program is an academic competition for recognition and scholarships that began in 1955. Some 1.4 million high school students take a qualifying test — the PSAT/NMSQT — which serves as the initial screen. The highest 50,000 scores qualify for recognition.

About 16,000 students have received notification that they qualified as semifinalists.

They are the highest scoring students in each state. They advance to finalist standing by meeting certain academic standards. The Finalists are named in February and are eligibile for a variety of scholarships, which are based on academic abilities, skills and accomplishments as well as an essay.

The remaining 34,000 high scorers are named commended students. Although these students do not advance in the competition for National Merit program scholarship money, there are scholarships from corporations and businesses for these accomplished students.

Congratulations to all of our hard-working students!