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Schools

34 New Trier Seniors Make National Merit Semifinals

High score on precursor to SAT gives the students a crack at program's college scholarships.

announced Thursday that 34 seniors have been named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists.

“We’re very proud of our students who are clearly very well prepared and work very hard,” Superintendent Linda Yonke said.  “It’s a reflection of their hard work and our teachers.”

Earlier:

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Of about 1.5 million high school juniors across the country who entered the 2012 program by taking the 2010 Preliminary SAT (PSAT/NMSQT), nearly 16,000 of them earned the semifinalist designation. These students received an index score of at least 216 on the PSAT.

“It’s great for the kids because it provides them with help for admissions and scholarship,” Yonke said. 

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Students who qualify as semifinalists are eligible to compete for one of the 8,300 National Merit Scholarships, worth more than $34 million a year.

While the current senior class has two more semifinalists than last year's group, Nicole Dizon, director of communications and alumni relations, indicated in an e-mail that the qualifying score changes from year to year.

Throughout the years, District 203 has maintained that it does not teach to standardized tests and instead aims to prepare students to be successful in college and beyond.

“We believe that a challenging and rigorous curriculum will do well for kids in preparation for college and testing,” Yonke said.  “The test preparation is not as valuable as rigorous curriculum. The test just measure a couple of skills and abilities and we teach our students a much broader set of skills and abilities.” 

In order to become a finalist, students must also obtain a recommendation from their school’s principal and earn an SAT score that reaffirms their score on the PSAT. The National Merit program expects 15,000 semifinalists to proceed to finalist standing nationwide.

District 203’s National Merit semifinalists are:

  • Katherine Aulis
  • Emily Berez
  • Adam Cohen
  • Pakasutha Dhiantravan
  • Lejia Duan
  • Alexandra Farina
  • Benjamin Feis
  • Alexandra Gazzolo
  • Michael Goldman
  • Steven Hitchcock
  • Thomas Hoyt
  • Eleanor Hyun
  • Catherine Jameson
  • Andrew Lawlor
  • Kate Liu
  • Ian Lukidis
  • Samuel Madvig
  • Christopher McAllester
  • Anna McCarthy
  • Justin Meyer
  • John Murray
  • Katherine Murray
  • Amanda Nguyen
  • Evelyn No
  • Arthur Ozga
  • James Paik
  • Alana Peters
  • Michael Sanfilippo
  • Morgan Scott
  • Christina Tsai
  • David Tyson
  • Virginia Wiltshire-Gordon
  • Jeremy Zhang
  • Anna Ziv
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