Manalapan, Colts Neck, Marlboro Teens Named Nat'l Merit Finalists

MANALAPAN, NJ — One student from Manalapan High School was chosen as a semi-finalist for the extremely competitive 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program. That student is Jieben Liang, a senior.

The semi-finalists were announced Wednesday, Sept. 11. 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 (i.e., New Jersey will have more National Merit semi-finalists than North Dakota.)

To give you an idea of just how competitive selection is, only one student from Marlboro High School was chosen, Hailey Steinberg. And only one was chosen from Colts Neck High School: Ty Blitstein.

Four students from Holmdel High were chosen, as was one student from Christian Brothers, a private school (Drew Valsamedis). No students from Raritan High School in Hazlet were chosen; no students from Middletown were chosen, or Rumson-Fair Haven Regional.

However, magnet schools, particularly those that focus on STEM education, saw many students selected. For example, nearly two dozen were chosen from High Tech in Lincroft. High Tech is a magnet public high school focusing on math and science; students must apply to go there. And sixteen kids were chosen who attend Biotechnology High School, another magnet school in Freehold. The BioTech students are:

Agarwal, Annika
Aplash, Kirti
Chaudhari, Kush
Fitzgerald, Dylan J.
Gu, Oliver S.
Kalyanraman, Nikhil
Kraus, Caroline T.
Liao, Emily
Liu, Gloria
Nguyen, Theodore H.
Pan, Ethan J.
Samuel, Reina M.
Shushkovsky, Max C.
Swinchoski, Benjamin A.
Teza, Cameron O.
Zhang, Bridget Y.

The High Tech students are:

Chen, Kevin
Diament, Justin N.
Echezona, Chukwuemekalum K.
Florendo, Katrina C.
Hansen, Gustav
Jain, Aruj
Jain, Sana
Jiang, Emily S.
Kalanther, Addison G.
Kumar, Amiya
Kumar, Aparna
Li, Karen X.
Liu, Katherine G.
Menon, Arjun C.
Raghavan, Ravi
Sarma, Abhijat
Thalasila, Akhil S.
Wang, Lawrence
Yan, Jason H.
Yao, Brianna S.
Yu, Adrienne
Zhang, Sophie S.

One student from the Marine Academy of Science and Technology out on Sandy Hook was chosen: Isabela Fuentes. Marine Academy is another magnet public school that students must apply to attend.

There are about 16,000 semi-finalists nationwide, representing less than 1 percent of all high-school seniors in the U.S.

Students must then apply to become a finalist. The student and their high school must submit a detailed application. The application must contain information about a student’s academic record, leadership abilities, the honors and awards they’ve received and more.