MHS Announces 17 National Merit Finalists

From Millburn Township School District

Seventeen Millburn High School seniors have been named National Merit Finalists in the 2012 Competition for National Merit Scholarships. They are among 15,000 students who are now eligible for Merit Scholarship Awards which will be announced in late spring.

This year’s finalists are:

Martha Berg, Henry Chapman, Jiayun Fang, Samantha Fortuna, Harrison Glicklich, Michael Harmon, Eric Hertz, Amanda Huang, Jacob Kaufman, James Kiselik, William Krinsman, Chanthia Ma, Henry Meng, Asher Sendyk, Margaret Tang, Joseph Wang, Anxin Zhu.  Each of these students has received a certificate commending them on their accomplishment.

More than 1.5 million students in nearly 22,000 U.S. high schools entered the program as juniors by taking the 2010 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.  The nationwide pool of 16,000 Semifinalists included the highest scoring entrants in each state, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors.

To become finalists, these students had to maintain a record of very high academic performance, be endorsed and recommended by their school principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm their earlier qualifying test performance.  They also submitted a detailed scholarship application, which included a self-descriptive essay and information about the student’s participation and leadership in school and community activities.

The selection of approximately 8,300 Merit Scholarship winners from this group of more than 15,000 Finalists is now in progress. The Merit Scholarship awards, worth roughly $51 million, will be announced in the spring and summer.

National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC), which conducts the academic competition, is a privately financed, not-for-profit corporation established in 1955. Merit Scholarship awards are supported by some 440 independent sponsors and by NMSC's own funds. Sponsor organizations include corporations and businesses, company foundations, professional associations, and colleges and universities.