Seventeen Del Norte Students Named National Merit Semifinalists
On Sept. 15, seventeen students from Del Norte High School were announced as 2022 National Merit semifinalists. They are Sara Beniwal, Madeleine Boedeker, Hannah Chen, Sunny Fan, Bryant Jin, David Kim, Justin Li, Jasmine Lu, Eyaad Mir, Aashi Mittal, Kyle Myint, Saurav Nagpal, Jeffrey Sheng, Sanya Sitlani, Anthony Wo, Rebeeca Wei, and Sarah Xie, all of whom are seniors at Del Norte.
Since 1955, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation has annually recognized high academic achieving seniors in high school. It also awards the students scholarships from the corporation’s own funds and the funds of hundreds of business organizations and colleges. To qualify as a semifinalist, students first take the Preliminary SAT as a junior at their high school. Each state has a qualifying score, and those who score above it become semifinalists. Each year, around 1.5 million students take the test. Only the top one percent, around sixteen thousand students, are able to get this distinction. 180 students in San Diego county were named National Merit Semifinalists, with seventeen being from Del Norte.
Rebecca Wei, a National Merit semifinalist, is a senior at DNHS. She expresses her thoughts about receiving this award: “Being a national merit semifinalist is quite gratifying, but at the same time I don’t put much emphasis on it. I spent a lot of time studying for the SAT and PSAT and standardized tests in general, so it feels great to get an award like this. However, I know there are a lot of really smart people in this school, so I don’t think this award is truly representative of who the best or smartest is in the school. That’s not to say I don’t welcome the opportunity for scholarships, though!”
Another student, Jeffrey Sheng (’21), credits himself as a semifinalist to luck: “I personally think the PSAT is just a measurement of how lucky you are.”
The program does not stop at the semifinalists level. To become a National Merit finalist, a detailed application with a recommendation letter is needed from each semifinalist. Out of the 16000 semifinalists, 15000 will be selected as finalists in February 2022. Among them, about half will be able to earn scholarships. Three types of scholarships will be offered. According to the National Merit Scholarship program, they include “2,500 National Merit® $2500 Scholarships for which all Finalists will be considered, about 1,000 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for which Finalists who meet a company or business grantor’s specified criteria will be considered, and some 4,000 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship for which only Finalists who will attend their respective sponsor institutions are considered”.