Oyster Bay Kid Named National Merit Scholarship Semi-Finalist

OYSTER BAY, NY — A bright Oyster Bay kid has just been named a semi-finalist 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.

In Oyster Bay, Gisele L. Lachman was the lone Oyster Bay High School student to be named a semi-finalist for the scholarship.

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

Glen Cove (Glen Cove High School)

• Nicole Khamov

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

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.

Students will find out in February whether they make it to the finalist stage. The scholarship winners will be announced beginning in April 2020.