See: Great Neck National Merit Scholarship Semi-Finalists

GREAT NECK, NY — Sixteen bright Great Neck kids have been named semi-finalists for the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program. The semi-finalists were announced Wednesday and include about 16,000 high-school seniors. The kids will compete for the scholarships, which will be offered in the spring.

More than 90 percent of the semi-finalists will be named as finalists for the scholarship, the National Merit Scholarship Program said in a news release. Of those finalists, about half will win a scholarship.

More than 1.5 million students applied for the highly competitive scholarship and the semi-finalists represent less than 1 percent of all high-school seniors in the United States. For each state, the number of semi-finalists is proportional to that state's percentage of the total graduating seniors in the country.

Here are the winners from Great Neck:

Great Neck South High School

• Yian Dong
• Julia D. Duval
• Ali I. Fazal
• Austin Z. George
• Elizabeth Grosul
• Talia Katz
• Christina Liu
• Timothy C. Liu
• Gabriel D. Magdison
• Shourav B. Saha
• Joelle Siong Sin
• Keena Yin

John L. Miller Great Neck North High School

• Raymond J. Lin
• Arielle Mueller
• Daniel Q. Zeng

Village School

• Isabella Dayani

To become a finalist, the program explains that students and a high-school official 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.

Here are the other semi-finalists from around the area:

Glen Cove (Glen Cove High School)

• Nicole Khamov

Oyster Bay (Oyster Bay High School)

• Gisele L. Lachman

Locust Valley (Locust Valley High School)

• Nina R. Cialone
• Michael C. DiSpirito
• Michelle A. Hsu
• Nitha J. Paulus

Glen Head (Long Island Lutheran High School)

• Andrew J. Semelka

Port Washington (Paul D. Schreiber High School)

• Harrison S. Fried
• Tiffany Guo
• Maddison Chiara
• Jeannie D. Ren
• Maansi Shroff
• Noah Sollinger
• Kyle Wong

Roslyn Heights (Roslyn High School)

• Zoe P. Farber
• Joshua A. Flashner
• Daniel I. Flyer
• Daleep S. Grewal
• Catherine Tom
• Kyle Yoon

Manhasset (Manhasset High School)

• Amanda Cao
• Catherine M. Furlong
• Sydney R. Ginsburg
• Matthew Kiley
• Jiacheng Li
• Justin C. Liu
• Sofia A. Matos
• Dohyeon Park
• Oliver L. Reinhardt
• Ella R. Wesson
• Elizabeth E. Wu
• Serena Zhao